By davecormier on

Hey folks,

I've just inherited partial responsibility for a large drupal installation (eventually up to... I don't know 100 multisites) at the university of prince edward island. Among the fine work done by my colleagues are the beginnings of some interesting php code to manage all the multisite installations from one spot. It is currently a collection of php scripts, but i'm hoping to develop it into a module that could be added to the 'management' multisite installation.

1. Has anyone attempted this before?
2. Is there existing code I should look at?
3. If not, is anyone interested in coming along for the ride?

My first two objectives are to take our 'watchdog' and 'permissions' code and implement it from the module. The watchdog code simply aggregates the watchdog results from all the multisites. The permissions code displays all roles and their permissions from each site as well as offering the opportunity for changing the permissions for a given role across all sites.

comments? feelings you'd like to share?

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

magico’s picture

magico commented

(subscribe)

davecormier’s picture

davecormier commented

I was sent an email today that directed me to the rollout module http://drupal.org/project/rollout and the backup and migrate module http://drupal.org/project/backup_migrate which both offer some nice code to work from. The plan starts to come together. bwahahaha.

mikeschinkel’s picture

mikeschinkel commented

There is a huge need for what you discuss. I will eventually get to the point where I would be willing to contribute some time toward it but unfortunately I have a critical path between now and then that I have to focus on first.

davecormier’s picture

davecormier commented

I've got this need on three projects. I'm going to keep this thread alive until I have a ridiculously untrustworthy module to present, and then hopefully I'll be able to partner up with some folks who have the time to take the proof of concept to the next level.

mikeschinkel’s picture

mikeschinkel commented

Good plan.

canen’s picture

canen commented

Have a look at the domain module. It may not be what you want but it does something similar.

davecormier’s picture

davecormier commented

Great module... will probably poke into the code... but our existing sites are all on different databases, and i believe the domain module is intended for a shared database. We went with separate databases over concerns about the scalability of mysql... warranted or not :P

davecormier’s picture

davecormier commented

Found this http://drupal.org/project/multisite_manager

Allows creation of new drupal sites from a central drupal site without the creator having access to database info. The new site is installed either in the same database with a different prefix or if the drupal db_user has access to create a database and grant privileges, then possibly there.