New feature request for balancer-manager: command line usage

[John M <jf...@gmail.com>]

Hello,

I have a new feature request for the balancer-manager: the ability to
enable or disable servers in the balancer using the command line,
instead of using the only way that exists that I know of: the
balancer-manager webpage.  The use case for this would be the creation
of a shell script that could call such a command-prompt command, as
part of an automated hot-deploy or continuous deployment architecture.
I don't know anything about the httpd source and don't know if this
would have to be part of a new executable if not an addition to httpd
or apacectl....what does everyone / anyone think?  This is my first
time emailing this group: for this request to be considered, do I need
to create an item in Bugzilla?
I could also think about trying to implement this sort of thing myself
and submitting it as a patch, but I could very much use guidance
towards what to create / modify and where it would go in the
codebase......

Thanks,
John M

Re: New feature request for balancer-manager: command line usage

[Graham Leggett <mi...@sharp.fm>]

On 30 Oct 2012, at 9:12 PM, John M <jf...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I have a new feature request for the balancer-manager: the ability to
> enable or disable servers in the balancer using the command line,
> instead of using the only way that exists that I know of: the
> balancer-manager webpage.  The use case for this would be the creation
> of a shell script that could call such a command-prompt command, as
> part of an automated hot-deploy or continuous deployment architecture.

Could you not use an HTTP client like curl within your shell script to do this, or are there circumstances that make this difficult?

Regards,
Graham
--

Re: New feature request for balancer-manager: command line usage

[Jim Jagielski <ji...@jaguNET.com>]

You're right that the API really needs to be documented. My hope
is that once the "make balancer-manager changes sticky" backports
are approved and in 2.4.x, I'll write up in more detail how
the b-m works and its API.

afaik, nginx lacks any sort of dynamic reverse-proxy reconfig
capability. It's one of the killer features of Apache 2.4
esp for cloud environs.

On Nov 1, 2012, at 9:07 AM, John M <jf...@gmail.com> wrote:

> It's correct that somebody could use an http client to do the load
> balancing, it's just awkward: there isn't a published API for it.  The
> script / client might need to have some intelligence built into it, to
> try to figure out what the current states of the load balanced servers
> are, and to handle any errors that might occur.  Also, with Tomcat,
> one can deploy outside of the tomcat manager web application with
> Maven, with Ant, or with the Tomcat Client Deployer, which is why I
> was hoping something could eventually be built into Httpd as well
> (and, does nginx already have this capability?).  But for now, you're
> right, I can do what I need to do with Curl or some other client.
> 
> Thanks,
> John M
> 
> On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 7:29 AM, Jim Jagielski <ji...@jagunet.com> wrote:
>> 
>> On Oct 30, 2012, at 3:12 PM, John M <jf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hello,
>>> 
>>> I have a new feature request for the balancer-manager: the ability to
>>> enable or disable servers in the balancer using the command line,
>>> instead of using the only way that exists that I know of: the
>>> balancer-manager webpage.  The use case for this would be the creation
>>> of a shell script that could call such a command-prompt command, as
>>> part of an automated hot-deploy or continuous deployment architecture.
>>> I don't know anything about the httpd source and don't know if this
>>> would have to be part of a new executable if not an addition to httpd
>>> or apacectl....what does everyone / anyone think?  This is my first
>>> time emailing this group: for this request to be considered, do I need
>>> to create an item in Bugzilla?
>>> I could also think about trying to implement this sort of thing myself
>>> and submitting it as a patch, but I could very much use guidance
>>> towards what to create / modify and where it would go in the
>>> codebase......
>>> 
>> 
>> Right now, the balancer-manager doesn't require the use
>> of the web-interface. You can talk straight http to it
>> via curl/httpclient/whatevs. So creating a php/perl/python/ruby
>> script that interfaces with the manager should be no prob at all.
>> 
> 

Re: New feature request for balancer-manager: command line usage

[John M <jf...@gmail.com>]

It's correct that somebody could use an http client to do the load
balancing, it's just awkward: there isn't a published API for it.  The
script / client might need to have some intelligence built into it, to
try to figure out what the current states of the load balanced servers
are, and to handle any errors that might occur.  Also, with Tomcat,
one can deploy outside of the tomcat manager web application with
Maven, with Ant, or with the Tomcat Client Deployer, which is why I
was hoping something could eventually be built into Httpd as well
(and, does nginx already have this capability?).  But for now, you're
right, I can do what I need to do with Curl or some other client.

Thanks,
John M

On Thu, Nov 1, 2012 at 7:29 AM, Jim Jagielski <ji...@jagunet.com> wrote:
>
> On Oct 30, 2012, at 3:12 PM, John M <jf...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hello,
>>
>> I have a new feature request for the balancer-manager: the ability to
>> enable or disable servers in the balancer using the command line,
>> instead of using the only way that exists that I know of: the
>> balancer-manager webpage.  The use case for this would be the creation
>> of a shell script that could call such a command-prompt command, as
>> part of an automated hot-deploy or continuous deployment architecture.
>> I don't know anything about the httpd source and don't know if this
>> would have to be part of a new executable if not an addition to httpd
>> or apacectl....what does everyone / anyone think?  This is my first
>> time emailing this group: for this request to be considered, do I need
>> to create an item in Bugzilla?
>> I could also think about trying to implement this sort of thing myself
>> and submitting it as a patch, but I could very much use guidance
>> towards what to create / modify and where it would go in the
>> codebase......
>>
>
> Right now, the balancer-manager doesn't require the use
> of the web-interface. You can talk straight http to it
> via curl/httpclient/whatevs. So creating a php/perl/python/ruby
> script that interfaces with the manager should be no prob at all.
>

Re: New feature request for balancer-manager: command line usage

[Jim Jagielski <ji...@jaguNET.com>]

On Oct 30, 2012, at 3:12 PM, John M <jf...@gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
> 
> I have a new feature request for the balancer-manager: the ability to
> enable or disable servers in the balancer using the command line,
> instead of using the only way that exists that I know of: the
> balancer-manager webpage.  The use case for this would be the creation
> of a shell script that could call such a command-prompt command, as
> part of an automated hot-deploy or continuous deployment architecture.
> I don't know anything about the httpd source and don't know if this
> would have to be part of a new executable if not an addition to httpd
> or apacectl....what does everyone / anyone think?  This is my first
> time emailing this group: for this request to be considered, do I need
> to create an item in Bugzilla?
> I could also think about trying to implement this sort of thing myself
> and submitting it as a patch, but I could very much use guidance
> towards what to create / modify and where it would go in the
> codebase......
> 

Right now, the balancer-manager doesn't require the use
of the web-interface. You can talk straight http to it
via curl/httpclient/whatevs. So creating a php/perl/python/ruby
script that interfaces with the manager should be no prob at all.