Changes between Initial Version and Version 1 of MasterUrl

Timestamp:

Oct 10, 2009, 5:47:06 PM (15 years ago)

Author:

Nicolas

Comment:

Add instructions on how to change a project's master URL. Text directly from my email to boinc_dev; I will do some cleanup shortly.

MasterUrl

@@ +1 @@
+= Changing a project URL =
+
+Changing a project master URL is not a trivial task. It's recommended that 
+projects avoid keeping things prone to change in their project URLs, like 
+using an IP address, or even putting the university they are in as part of 
+the hostname (Docking@Home had to change the URL twice or so because they 
+changed university / organization / department / something). Thus, the best 
+way is having a domain name just for that project. Good URLs don't change.
+
+Even having multiple projects as boinc.example.org/project1 and 
+boinc.example.org/project2 may be problematic if you eventually decide you 
+want to move project2 to a different server. It's best to have 
+project1.example.org and project2.example.org so they can (now or in the 
+future) have different IP addresses. 
+
+All that said, here is how you change a project URL:
+
+
+ 1. Pick a *good* new URL according to the above recommendations, so that you 
+ will never need to change it again.
+ 2. If the project was ever public, post news to let users now the URL will 
+ change.
+ 3. If you have any tasks in progress or waiting to be sent, it's recommended 
+ you wait until they are all done before changing the URL. And/or abort the 
+ unsent tasks. You *could* edit the database to fix URLs for input files, to 
+ make the unsent workunits work once the URL is changed; but if users already 
+ have workunits on their computers, they will still have old URLs and you 
+ can't edit that.
+ 4. Stop the project.
+ 5. Replace URL everywhere in config.xml
+ 6. Replace scheduler URL in html/users/schedulers.txt. Prefix should match the 
+ URL in <cgi_url> in config.xml.
+ 7. If you have project-wide files, like logos for the simple GUI, replace 
+ download URLs in project_files.xml
+ 8. Delete everything in html/cache, since cached pages may have links to the 
+ old URL, and users would get broken links for an hour or so. Don't delete the 
+ cache folder itself. rm -rf html/cache/*
+ 9. Either create new application versions, or update the app_version table to 
+ have the new URLs:
+ UPDATE app_version SET xml_doc = 
+ REPLACE(xml_doc, "http://old.example.com/", "http://new.example.org/");
+ 10. If you have forums, you may want to do a similar replacement on forum 
+ contents, in case users posted links to workunits / users / computers / 
+ something.
+ 11. Start the project, send some test workunits,  and hope it works. Keep a 
+ copy of "Murphy's Law - and other reasons why things go wrong" handy.
+