Yil
05-17-2007, 02:38 AM
I see several requests for some sort of ability to share users across several FTP servers (sites), so I'm trying to understand the requirements... Speak now or forever hold your peace.
1) First off, I'm thinking of a separate standalone application to sync the sites (perhaps even a new version of ioGUI or something with a visual frontend). I don't think adding this into ioFTPD itself buys anything.
2) I'm personally in favor of using ioFTPD userfiles to hold all user info (with a few extra fields perhaps) on all the FTP servers instead of an SQL style database. This would mean ioFTPD wouldn't have to load a dll to handle the shared users. It also means that if the sync server(s) went down everybody could still use their accounts.
If an SQL database was required (speak up if so and why) then the sync tool I envision could handle the database instead of the individual sites.
3) Sites must support both local and shared users, but is there a need to share users across disjoint sets of servers? I.e. share some users with sites A,B and other users with sites C,D or is it just one set of shared users across all of them? If disjoint, would a flag indicating they couldn't login to some sites be an acceptable alternative but all the users would exist on all the sites? Is there any problem with using just 1 sync server (possibly replicated) or are the disjoint sites so independent they couldn't even share a sync server?
4) Are all sites created equal or should some be masters and other slaves? By this I mean that only master sites can create/modify shared users.
5) What about groups? Are all shared users in the same group or should they be allowed to be in local groups as well?
6) For site that use credits how should that work? Should credits on any site be usable on any other site automatically? Or should users have to manually enter a command to transfer them? Obviously this could be an option.
7) If the sites are using sections then perhaps some mapping between sites using the section names would be required so that MOVIE credits could only be used on MOVIE sections.
8) Should there be some command to see your credits on all or some sections across all the sites if they aren't automatically shared and thus the same on all sites until used?
9) What about up/down stats? Shared or local or both?
1) First off, I'm thinking of a separate standalone application to sync the sites (perhaps even a new version of ioGUI or something with a visual frontend). I don't think adding this into ioFTPD itself buys anything.
2) I'm personally in favor of using ioFTPD userfiles to hold all user info (with a few extra fields perhaps) on all the FTP servers instead of an SQL style database. This would mean ioFTPD wouldn't have to load a dll to handle the shared users. It also means that if the sync server(s) went down everybody could still use their accounts.
If an SQL database was required (speak up if so and why) then the sync tool I envision could handle the database instead of the individual sites.
3) Sites must support both local and shared users, but is there a need to share users across disjoint sets of servers? I.e. share some users with sites A,B and other users with sites C,D or is it just one set of shared users across all of them? If disjoint, would a flag indicating they couldn't login to some sites be an acceptable alternative but all the users would exist on all the sites? Is there any problem with using just 1 sync server (possibly replicated) or are the disjoint sites so independent they couldn't even share a sync server?
4) Are all sites created equal or should some be masters and other slaves? By this I mean that only master sites can create/modify shared users.
5) What about groups? Are all shared users in the same group or should they be allowed to be in local groups as well?
6) For site that use credits how should that work? Should credits on any site be usable on any other site automatically? Or should users have to manually enter a command to transfer them? Obviously this could be an option.
7) If the sites are using sections then perhaps some mapping between sites using the section names would be required so that MOVIE credits could only be used on MOVIE sections.
8) Should there be some command to see your credits on all or some sections across all the sites if they aren't automatically shared and thus the same on all sites until used?
9) What about up/down stats? Shared or local or both?