[Popcon-developers] Bug#459910: please randomize the submission time (to prevent to DDoS popcon.debian.org)

[Holger Levsen]

package: popularity-contest
severity: important
x-debbugs-cc: debian-publicity

On Sunday 06 January 2008 16:33, Petter Reinholdtsen wrote:
> The popcon count reached 70 000, and then it started falling.  I have
> no idea why, if it is a capasity problem with the service or if the
> number of contributors really is dropping.  But I thought it best to
> mention it.

As discussed on irc this is because all clients hammer popcon.debian.org on 
the same day at the same time (in their local timezone at least) once a week, 
so many submissions get lost.

<h01ger> zobel, so adding a random sleep (in background, so that the other 
weekly scripts are run immediatly) and first testing this in sid before 
uploading to s-p-u seems like a plan to me. please discuss :)
<pere> it is a good plan as I see it too. :)
<zobel> at least we should modify popcon in some way it is not DDoSing gluck 
any more.
<zobel> random sleep sounds like i plan we could go.
<h01ger> zobel, can you imagine another way (short of disabling popcon)?
<pere> sitesummary do random sleep, and that is a pretty effective way to 
solve the issue.
<zobel> the other way could be to remove it from cron.weekly install it on 
cron.d and set exec time to random.
<h01ger> right
<zobel> by the maintainer script installing it
<pere> I prefer to have the cron file a conffile.
<pere> is there a popcon bug report about this?  It would be very helpful.  
I've asked sysadmin for info by email, but got no reply.

#413529 is related but not neccessarily the same issue.


regards,
	Holger
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