View source for Test.wikipedia.org

'''test.wikipedia.org''' is a special wiki runs off the deployment source (The "wikipedia" home directory on NFS, as operated from [[fenari]]) as opposed to the deployed code that is synchronized across the apache clusters.

== Purpose ==
Basically, testwiki is intended primarily for short-term testing of code right before you push it to the rest of the wikis, or long-term testing of configuration options or extensions that aren't enabled by default.  It is possible at any time that someone may come along behind you after you have made a change to one of the files in <code>/home/wikipedia/common</code> (which you intended only to test on testwiki) and [[sync-common]] it to all of the apaches.  Horrors!  So, long-term changes should go into a block wrapped in an <code>if ( $wgDBname === 'testwiki' )</code> (to prevent them from accidentally being synchronized to all servers!). Short term changes (anything not committed to the git repo) should either be committed and rolled out, or reverted as soon as possible.

== Details ==
As of June 2012, test.wikipedia.org runs off of the files in <code>/home/wikipedia/common</code> from [[NFS]] (see also [[MediaWiki deployment setup]]). That is different from the servers for all other wikis. Normal apaches run from the local copy in <tt>/usr/local/apache/common</tt>. They also don't have NFS mounted.

The [[load balancer]] redirects traffic intended for test.wikipedia.org to one dedicated apache ([[srv193]], as of June 2012). That server uses the puppet class <tt>applicationserver::home</tt> (which makes sure <code>/home/wikipedia</code> is mounted from NFS.

We deploy from the home directory (from [[fenari]]) to the apaches using one of the various [[sync scripts]]. 

The most important parts of <code>/home/wikipedia/common</code> are the <code>php-*</code> directories which contain the installations of the MediaWiki software (which themselves are checkouts of <code>wmf/*</code> branches from the <code>mediawiki/core</code> repository.

In May 2012, all of <code>/home/wikipedia/common</code> (except for the MediaWiki installs in <code>php-*</code>) has been made public in the [https://gerrit.wikimedia.org/r/gitweb?p=operations/mediawiki-config.git <code>operations/mediawiki-config</code>] repository (previously it was in a private repo, which still exists but now only contains private files, such as passwords).


TODO : how does Apache use /home/wikipedia instead of /usr/local ?
Puppet: user home directories are not managed by puppet.  If test.wikipedia gets moved to a new host, change the stanza in sites.pp on our [[puppet]] server to reflect the new location.


== See also ==
* http://test.wikipedia.org
* [[MediaWiki deployment setup]]
* [[NFS]]
* [[test2.wikipedia.org]]

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[[Category:Services]]