Difference between revisions of "Tracker"

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(Add a little history, all discerned through reading logs etc.)
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* [[user:chfoo|chfoo]]
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== History ==
This history is both incomplete (it stops in early 2012) and probably wrong in areas.
Originally, ArchiveTeam coordinated large projects through the wiki, keeping tables of (the analogues of what are in tracker terminology) items and letting people claim them and update their progress by editing the wiki.<ref>[[Yahoo_Video_Warroom]]</ref>Midway through the [[Google Video]] project, in April 2011, [[User:Underscor|Underscor]] created a a system called "Listerine" that would do this automatically<ref>[[Google Video Warroom#Get_Involved_With_Listerine]]</ref><ref>[[Google Video#A_Brief_History]], take caution that public IRC logs are not available from this time</ref> (a client for the Listerine protocol can be found [https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/googlegargle/blob/master/listerine here].) This remained an attractive concept (and the name "tracker" seems to have originated during one of these discussions<ref>https://archive.fart.website/bin/irclogger_log/archiveteam?date=2011-07-13,Wed&sel=94#l94</ref>), and later in the year, [[User:Alard|Alard]], the de facto project lead/resident enthusiast of [[MobileMe]], wanted Underscor to set up another Listerine instance for it<ref>https://archive.fart.website/bin/irclogger_log/archiveteam?date=2011-10-16,Sun&sel=265#l265</ref>. Apparently this never happened, since a few weeks later Alard wrote his own system, which had something resembling the current tracker protocol.<ref>https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/mobileme-grab/commit/006bc0388f3ce3867bb3fd654c72c936cec57c02</ref> A few months later, this was replaced by a shell script called "Seesaw", which added automatic uploading with Rsync<ref>https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/mobileme-grab/commit/94873e7d81ea68b3f99cfba56d64bd57fd68dcaa</ref>


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Revision as of 07:59, 29 May 2022

General Overview

Project admin overview

The Tracker software is the center-pivot of Archiveteam's distributed archiving efforts. It hands out items to be downloaded and keeps track of what is completed. Items can be usernames, subdomains, full URLs, basically any unit we can use to break the site into manageable chunks. The progress of each project can be viewed via the leaderboard interface on https://tracker.archiveteam.org.

A leaderboard

The Warrior is the yang to the Tracker's yin. The warriors get the list of current projects from the project file on https://warriorhq.archiveteam.org/.

API

This is a sample project snippet from the projects.json file (line breaks included for readability):

{
    "name": "streetfiles",
    "title": "Streetfiles",
    "description": "Streetfiles is closing April, 30th, 2013.",
    "repository": "https://github.com/ArchiveTeam/streetfiles-grab.git",
    "logo": "http://archiveteam.org/images/7/7b/Streetfiles-logo.png",
    "marker_html": 
        "<a href='http://tracker.archiveteam.org/streetfiles/'>
        <img src='http://archiveteam.org/images/7/7b/Streetfiles-logo.png'
        alt='Streetfiles' width='235' height='50' /></a>",
    "deadline": "2013-04-30T23:59:59Z",
    "host": "streetfiles.org",
    "leaderboard": "http://tracker.archiveteam.org/streetfiles/",
    "lat_lng": [
        51,
        9
    ]
},

It shows where to get the grab code and other project information.

Here is an example root of the file:

{
    "auto_project": "projectslug",
    "broadcast_message": "<p>This message is shown only 
        in the warrior VM web UI at time of writing.</p>",
    "tracker_banner_html": "This is shown on the tracker 
        front page. <em>Wow!</em>",
    "warrior": {"seesaw_version":"0.7.0"},
    "projects": [],
}

Hardware

The tracker runs on a Linode instance operated by chronomex.

Monitoring

https://tracker.archiveteam.org has a Munin instance located at http://zeppelin.xrtc.net/corp.xrtc.net/shilling.corp.xrtc.net/.

Software used:

  • Universal Tracker is a Ruby HTTP application that sends and receives JSON payloads and uses Redis for the data store.
  • Redis A memory-based key-value store
  • Debian is the Linux distribution the stack is built upon.
  • warrior-hq a small Sinatra web app to manage the Warriors and display the geo-location world map.

You can also set up your own tracker.

People

In case of a tracker maintenance emergency, please contact these active users (as of 2014-08-29). Tracker emergencies only!:

History

This history is both incomplete (it stops in early 2012) and probably wrong in areas.

Originally, ArchiveTeam coordinated large projects through the wiki, keeping tables of (the analogues of what are in tracker terminology) items and letting people claim them and update their progress by editing the wiki.[1]Midway through the Google Video project, in April 2011, Underscor created a a system called "Listerine" that would do this automatically[2][3] (a client for the Listerine protocol can be found here.) This remained an attractive concept (and the name "tracker" seems to have originated during one of these discussions[4]), and later in the year, Alard, the de facto project lead/resident enthusiast of MobileMe, wanted Underscor to set up another Listerine instance for it[5]. Apparently this never happened, since a few weeks later Alard wrote his own system, which had something resembling the current tracker protocol.[6] A few months later, this was replaced by a shell script called "Seesaw", which added automatic uploading with Rsync[7]