[ic] maintenance mode? and extra pooling idea (softgoods and travel call)

Ron Phipps interchange-users@icdevgroup.org
Fri Apr 25 15:14:01 2003


> From: Paul Jordan
> 
> > >They did have something I wouldn't mind trying to do in IC. It was
> called
> > >maintenance mode, and would allow you to put up a (I guess) site
wide
> > >redirect to a temporary maintenance page. and lets no customers
sign up
> X
> > >minutes prior... etc.
> > >
> > >What would be involved with something like this? I am guessing
> > Apache would
> > >be the force to coordinate with?? I don't have much knowledge in
these
> > >areas, but if I can have some hints/points to research on... I
> > wouldn't have
> > >to research transportation. (future invention being the wheel...)
> > >
> [snip]
> >
> > I usually do this:
> >
> > 1. edit special_pages/missing.html to add the maintenance message.
> > 2. mv pages pages.bak
> > 3. mkdir pages (an empty pages directory)
> >
> > ...now every catalog page request ends up at missing.html, but
> > the catalog
> > is still up and the admin still works. You could probably use some
> > combination of PageDir and SpecialPage directories in the catalog
cfg to
> > achieve the same thing. For that matter, you could put something
> > like this
> > in the *_TOP regions:
> >
> > [tmp page]@@MV_PAGE@@[/tmp]
> > [if var MAINTENANCE_MODE]       # or is that [if variable...] ?
> >          [if scratch page !~ /maintenance/]
> >                  [bounce page=maintenance]
> >          [/if]
> > [/if]
> >
> > ...then just set MAINTENANCE_MODE to a non-blank value in the
> catalog.cfg
> > and Apply Changes to go into maintenance mode.
> >
> > And yes, there are so many other ways...
> >
> >
> > - Ed L.
> 
> 
> Thanks Ed
> 
> Yes, I see. This gets me thinking. I will look into this, however I
think
> I
> may try and instead, leave the pages/* there, place your above *code*
but
> with additions of a bypass. So, it will instead require a custom var
to
> view
> every page, bouncing regular users to a "maintenance" page, and still
> allowing the developers to log in (via maintenance page setting custom
> var)
> and use the front end.
> 
> Thanks again
> 
> Paul

Hello Paul,

This probably isn't as slick as the solution you are planning, but the
way we have been doing it is using a password protected system in
Apache.  We use something like:

<Directory /home/site/public_html>
AuthName "Site.com scheduled maintenance, please come back in 5
minutes."
AuthType Basic
AuthUserFile /home/site/admin_users
require valid-user
</Directory>

We comment the section when the site is live and uncomment it during
maintenance.

I like your proposed solution and may look at doing something like that.

Thanks,
-Ron