Re: MIRRORING
Murray-Rust Dr P (pmr1716@ggr.co.uk)
Thu, 26 Jan 1995 16:19:22 +0000 (GMT)
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On Wed, 25 Jan 1995 Dierk.Seeburg@asu.edu wrote:
> Dear Dr. Murray-Rust,
[nice things about course deleted :-)]
>
> > One of the concerns I have is in regard to the server access. We have
> > already discovered that the closer we are getting to the actual start of
> > the class network traffic is quite heavy. I was disconnected a few times
> > and/or my connection was refused by the host computer. Thus, I would just
> > like to ask that precautions are taken that technical difficulties will not
> > stand in the way of doing virtual science and education.
> > Thank you so much for your time and efforts,
> > Cheerio,
> > Dierk
> >
> > Dierk Seeburg ,__o
> > Dept. of Botany _-\ <,
> > Arizona State University (*)/'(*)
> > Tempe, AZ 85287-1601
> > Replies to: agdxs@asuvm.inre.asu.edu
> >
> >
> This is VERY important, Dierk.
>
> I fully agree we have to have mirrors for the course and that we
> keep them as up to date as possible. There are some interesting
> technical and human problems. I'm copying in GNA-TECH which is the
> technical group of the GNA. (I haven't talked much about GNA in this
> course so far, but it is very important and when I have time, I'll
> explain it :-) I'm also copying in Alan Bleasby at Daresbury where the
> course first started.
>
> MIRRORING THE CORE
>
> It is relatively straightforward to mirror a single hypertree and
> Alan Bleasby has agreed to do this at Daresbury and Sandro Magri in Italy
> has also offered. MORE OFFERS WOULD BE WELCOME. Alan, correct me if I'm
> wrong, but basically BBK will produce a script which forms a tar.Z of the
> whole hypertree. Then the sites agree on permissions (e.g. which site has
> access to what) and then a cron job does copies it every midnight and
> unpacks.
> IFF authors have used relative addresses there should be no
> portability problems.
>
> MIRRORING IMAGEMAPS
>
> This shouldn't be a major problem, although I have found with some
> servers that they need absolute addresses in imagemap.conf and *.map.
> However, the script has to copy imagemap.conf and *.map files as well and
> the mirrorsite has to know where to mount them - addresses may/will need
> editing. CAN SOMEONE GIVE ME A DEFINITIVE ANSWER HERE, PLEASE?
>
>
> MIRRORING CGI FORMS
>
> This is much harder, because some forms create information (e.g.
> annotations to documents.) Others simply carry out searches or whatever
> and create documents on the fly. We CANNOT HAVE INFORMATION CREATED AT
> MORE THAN ONE SITE UNLESS WE HAVE A DISTRIBUTED MECHANISM FOR MAINTAINING IT.
> This will be a problem for all GNA courses and I'll throw this to
> gna-tech!
>
> MIRRORING OTHER HYPERTREES
>
> This is really hairy! Many course members have made URLs available to
> us. Some, like PDB, existed already, some have been specially created for
> the course. At present vsns-pps simply points to these from its core.
> We cannot automatically copy them into our core because:
> - we don't hold the copyright
> - we could not easily run a worm through the remote material and know
> where the boundaries are (they might reference other servers which were
> logically part of their 'group', but the worm wouldn't know).
>
> My proposal (which I'd been planning to float - and this is a
> good time) is:
> IF YOU ARE A CONTRIBUTOR, PLEASE CONSIDER WHETHER IT IS
> APPROPRIATE TO LET US MIRROR YOUR MATERIAL. IF SO, PLEASE ORGANISE IT AS
> A READONLY-HYPERTREE (we can't cope with mirroring other CGI scripts!!)
> and create a script to make a tar.Z in your top directory.
>
> We would then copy this at regular intervals and bolt it into the
> tree at BBK. The author would be fully recognised and the material would
> carry their name, their institution's logo, etc and whatever copyright was
> suitable. It would NOT be further available to BBK or GNA or anyone else
> unless the author so specified. It would then be useful for there to be
> two links in the hypertree - one to the living version and one to the
> static version at BBK.
>
> NOTE: JUMPING INTO THE MIDDLE OF HYPERTREES SHOULD BE AVOIDED IF
> AT ALL POSSIBLE.
>
>
> MIRRORING BBK MATERIAL
>
> A number of links point to BBK material not specifically
> connected with the course (e.g. 'recent structures') These would be
> treated as in the section above. BBK authors may or may not wish to
> participate.
>
> MIRRORING THE HYPERGLOSSARY
>
> The hyperglossary is going to have tremendous applicability and
> will have an independent existence outside the course. It HAS to have a
> central curation and therefore any mirroring will have to be done through
> the hyperglossary project. It is still very new - I'm not sure, for
> example, what role GNA may have in this. At the moment it MUST have a
> central site for the entry of information, although read-only copies
> could be mirrored. (It's rather like the GNA-personnel database, I suspect).
>
> CLEVER IDEAS WOULD BE WELCOMED HERE!
>
> CONCLUSION
>
> This is an extremely challenging area and I'd welcome offers from
> course members, gna-tech, or anyonbe else who reads this. (The previous
> GNA course - C++ - created a great deal of valuable resource for
> communication and management and this will also be a recurrent theme here!
>
> P.
>
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Peter Murray-Rust | "Nothing exists except atoms and empty
pmr1716@ggr.co.uk | space; all else is opinion" (Democritos).
Protein Structure Group, Glaxo Group Research, Greenford, MIDDX, UB6 0HE, UK
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