[Dbbalancer-users] Request for comments

[Andrew M. <an...@ca...>]

OK,  I've started to look at using DBBalancer in anger now, on a few
selected internet sites that we host.  I have thought about how I should
got about having a startup script to run dbbalancer when the system
boots.

The idea I have so far is:

1) Have a directory of configuration scripts for the various databases
to be 'balanced'.  I would make this directory in /etc/dbbalancer/conf.d
which would conform to the way Debian does these sorts of things.

2) My init script would then go through each configuration file in the
directory, starting a DBBalancer daemon for each one.

3) The process ID for each process would be written in
/var/run/dbbalancer/<confname>

4) When run with a 'stop' parameter, the init script would kill each
process.

Anyone have any comments on that approach?


Also, a few of things that would be good to see in the current
DBBalancer to support this sort of operation:

1) Less logging.  Currently DBBalancer logs every connection - this
seems a bit excessive for a website receiving a hundred thousand hits
each day.  Although it might be fine to have this level of logging as a
default, it would be nice to be able to reduce it further.

2) 'Detach and run as daemon' option.  DBBalancer really is a service,
and it should detach itself from the console and run in background. 
This should probably be the default operation, although while we
consider things to be 'alpha' perhaps it should only be an option.

3) Logging through syslog.  In normal operation I am likely to have a
number of DBBalancer daemons operating at the same time, in background,
it will be desirable to collect their error messages in one place.  I
would tend towards specifying a log facility in the configuration file,
and using syslog.

With these enhancements, along with fixes to the little niggles that
have come up in the last couple of days with 0.4, I believe we are
probably ready to call it a 'beta', and I will put packages into the
'unstable' branch of Debian.

Comments?

Regards,
						Andrew.
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