Author: ruaok

Classic Tagger degraded

All the usual tricks to massage our database server aren’t helping. 🙁 The problem appears to be the ever growing table of TRMs that the Classic Tagger uses. The table has gotten too big with dead TRMs and its really hard to remove all the dead TRMs. So, in order to get things back to … Continue reading “Classic Tagger degraded”

All the usual tricks to massage our database server aren’t helping. 🙁

The problem appears to be the ever growing table of TRMs that the Classic Tagger uses. The table has gotten too big with dead TRMs and its really hard to remove all the dead TRMs. So, in order to get things back to a sane state, we’ve disabled TRM functionality and our database is now working fairly well again.

Classic Tagger users: While we figure out how to proceed, the tagger will stop working. The classic tagger will not recognize any tracks right now — we apologize for the inconvenience. At this point, please check out the Picard and PicardQT as alternatives!

Stay tuned for more details!

Scheduled downtime: Friday 2000 UTC, 4pm EDT, 1pm PDT

We need to dump the database and re-import it in order to get off this crazy load spike the database has been on. We will be down for about 90 minutes starting today (Friday) at 2000 UTC, 4pm EDT, 1pm PDT. Sorry for the inconvenience and late notice! UPDATE: The import/export is taking longer than … Continue reading “Scheduled downtime: Friday 2000 UTC, 4pm EDT, 1pm PDT”

We need to dump the database and re-import it in order to get off this crazy load spike the database has been on. We will be down for about 90 minutes starting today (Friday) at 2000 UTC, 4pm EDT, 1pm PDT.

Sorry for the inconvenience and late notice!

UPDATE: The import/export is taking longer than we care for. We hope to be done soon. Sorry for the hassle.

Overloaded database server

The load on our database server has been growing over the last few days causing slow downs. Since our overall traffic is not going up right now, this suggests that our last update caused some performance issues. In order to analyze our traffic, I will be doing some performance tuning and query logging to attempt … Continue reading “Overloaded database server”

The load on our database server has been growing over the last few days causing slow downs. Since our overall traffic is not going up right now, this suggests that our last update caused some performance issues.

In order to analyze our traffic, I will be doing some performance tuning and query logging to attempt to get to the bottom of this problem. To that affect, MusicBrainz will have a couple of short downtimes today as I tinker with our database server.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Rachel Segal of MusicIP becomes the MetaBrainz Treasurer/Secretary

I’m proud to announce that Rachel Segal has just been voted to take the Treasurer/Secretary slot on the MetaBrainz Board of Directors. Rachel is the Marketing and Artist Relations manager for MusicIP and is already quite familiar with MusicBrainz and the MetaBrainz Foundation. Rachel Segal will be taking over the duties of the outgoing secretary/treasurer … Continue reading “Rachel Segal of MusicIP becomes the MetaBrainz Treasurer/Secretary”

I’m proud to announce that Rachel Segal has just been voted to take the Treasurer/Secretary slot on the MetaBrainz Board of Directors. Rachel is the Marketing and Artist Relations manager for MusicIP and is already quite familiar with MusicBrainz and the MetaBrainz Foundation.

Rachel Segal will be taking over the duties of the outgoing secretary/treasurer Rachel Soffa. Rachel Soffa has recently landed a big promotion which will make her life even more busy than before, thus necessitating this change.

Thank you very much Rachel Soffa and congratulations on your promotion! Thank you to Rachel Segal for joining our organization and helping out with our operations!

Google Summer of Code Projects have been accepted

I’m pleased to announce that we have accepted three Google Summer of Code projects: Using Collaborative Filtering to generate Relationships between artists for MusicBrainz by Sharon Myrtle Paradesi Working on implementing simplified NGS by Erik Dalén Improved Statistics and Trivia by Guelson Fostine Lukáš will mentor Erik and Guelson and I will be mentoring Sharon. … Continue reading “Google Summer of Code Projects have been accepted”

I’m pleased to announce that we have accepted three Google Summer of Code projects:

  1. Using Collaborative Filtering to generate Relationships between artists for MusicBrainz by Sharon Myrtle Paradesi
  2. Working on implementing simplified NGS by Erik Dalén
  3. Improved Statistics and Trivia by Guelson Fostine

Lukáš will mentor Erik and Guelson and I will be mentoring Sharon. By accepting three of our proposals Google is indirectly sponsoring MusicBrainz with another $15,000! (Each student gets $4,500 and each mentor gets $500 per student)

Thank you very much Google and good luck to Sharon, Erik and Guelson!

Our servers are overloaded!

This weekend we’ve seen a rise in tagger traffic to the MusicBrainz site. This extra traffic is causing load spikes that give us the dreaded 502 proxy error messages. Now that the release is done I can focus more time on getting our various hardware issues solved and bring a new database server online before … Continue reading “Our servers are overloaded!”

This weekend we’ve seen a rise in tagger traffic to the MusicBrainz site. This extra traffic is causing load spikes that give us the dreaded 502 proxy error messages. Now that the release is done I can focus more time on getting our various hardware issues solved and bring a new database server online before the load spikes return next weekend.

What can you do? There are three concrete things:

  1. Make a donation to help us cover our costs.
  2. Stop tagging for today and spend some time with your friends and family for Easter. 🙂
  3. If you must continue tagging, please use our UK mirror: http://www.uk.musicbrainz.org In the options dialog of your favorite tagging application, look for the tab that lets you set the server you’re using to tag. Enter www.uk.musicbrainz.org in that field and you should be good to go.

Sorry for the inconvenience, we’ll work on this as soon as possible!

Server update has been completed!

After much work by Lukáš, Dave, Age (Prodoc) and myself, I’m pleased to announce that the main server has been updated! We now have support for DataQuality, Labels, improved cover art, track annotations and a whole host of bug reports. To see the detailed list of what things have been included in this release, please … Continue reading “Server update has been completed!”

After much work by Lukáš, Dave, Age (Prodoc) and myself, I’m pleased to announce that the main server has been updated! We now have support for DataQuality, Labels, improved cover art, track annotations and a whole host of bug reports. To see the detailed list of what things have been included in this release, please see our release milestone.

This release is significant in a number of ways:

  1. The labels feature is our first major schema extension in quite some time.
  2. Its our first schema change release in over a year!
  3. Age Bosma (Prodoc) has submitted a number of patches that were included in this release. Its great to see another aspiring developer getting code included in the main server. Well done and thanks much, Age!

Huge thanks go to Lukáš, Dave, Age for working on this release. Thank you!

Next server release: 1 week from today

The next server update is scheduled to happen one week from today. Today Lukáš and I finished checking in changes and will now only do further bug fixes — that is if you help us find more bugs! A few things to note: Lukáš added support for track annotations and release formats! Data quality changes … Continue reading “Next server release: 1 week from today”

The next server update is scheduled to happen one week from today. Today Lukáš and I finished checking in changes and will now only do further bug fixes — that is if you help us find more bugs!

A few things to note:

  • Lukáš added support for track annotations and release formats!
  • Data quality changes are no longer automods for everyone. Their behavior is defined in the edit info page now.
  • Since we’ve implemented the DataQuality feature, expired edits will no longer stay open for a grace period. Thus the next time ModBot runs after the next release, a bunch of expired edits will be accepted, since all the data will be at the default level and the action for expired edits at the default level is to accept the edit! Is this really what we want? Please take a moment to review the edit info page now and make sure it all makes sense to you!

The staging server is now updated with the latest code — please come and help us test over the next week to make sure no new bugs slipped into the upcoming release.

Google Summer of Code deadline extended

Just a quick note: The Google Summer of Code student application deadline has been extended to March 26th! This gives you a little more time to get your proposals in. If you’re interested, take a look at our ideas page. So far, only 2 of the 6 proposals we have received are under any kind … Continue reading “Google Summer of Code deadline extended”

Just a quick note: The Google Summer of Code student application deadline has been extended to March 26th! This gives you a little more time to get your proposals in. If you’re interested, take a look at our ideas page.

So far, only 2 of the 6 proposals we have received are under any kind of serious consideration.

Thank you Rightround/BandBot and MusicIP!

I just returned from SXSW in Austin where I had the chance to speak to many people about MusicBrainz, see a few dozen bands and attend many music parties where I talked more about MusicBrainz. This trip was a great opportunity to catch up with a number of people and to forge new relationships for … Continue reading “Thank you Rightround/BandBot and MusicIP!”

I just returned from SXSW in Austin where I had the chance to speak to many people about MusicBrainz, see a few dozen bands and attend many music parties where I talked more about MusicBrainz. This trip was a great opportunity to catch up with a number of people and to forge new relationships for MusicBrainz.

This would not have happened if it wasn’t for Cliff and his cool team at Rightround/BandBot donating a free Music conference badge to me! And MusicIP rose to the challenge and found and paid for a hotel room so I could avoid sleeping on people’s hotel rooms floors!

Thanks Rightround and MusicIP — thanks for making my trip to SXSW possible and awesome!