Sharing a TW over a local network

[FrD]

Hi,

I would like to share a TW with two other guys at my office, on a
local network.
My idea is to store the TW on a server accessible for all of us.
Is there a way to use a TW with multiple users ?
I mean editing, modifying the TW. When someone is editing, the file is
locked or some signal is send to others to prevent them from accessing
the file.
When the file is released, this mechanism signals it too.
I found a thread on this topic : the idea was to use the field
containing the name of the owner : to put the value "Your Name" when
the file is not in use, and each person puts his name when it locks
it. Therer was some cookie stuff too.
But I don't think there was a conclusion to this discussion.

Any idea ?

http://groups.google.fr/group/TiddlyWiki/browse_thread/thread/b8a8ef19591e0735/1330824527aa233a?hl=fr&lnk=gst&q=share#1330824527aa233a

FrD

[wolfgang]

Hi FrD,

> I mean editing, modifying the TW. When someone is editing, the file is
> locked or some signal is send to others to prevent them from accessing
> the file.

TiddlyLockPlugin prevents multiple edits at the same time:

http://www.minormania.com/tiddlylock/tiddlylock.html#TiddlyLockPlugin

W.

[FrD]

Thanks for your quick answer.
I'll try the TiddlyLockPlugin this week-end

FrD

[kilucas]

FrD

I tried TiddlyLockPlugin but found that, although using some TWs all
by myself, I was sometimes told I could not effect changes because the
TW was locked. I'm guessing that maybe I closed some TWs without
saving changes and hence left the TW locked.

It's easy enough to unlock the TW - you just delete a lock file - but
this isn't something your network users might know and they could find
they're locked out of TWs they'd normally expect to be able to change.
It may be that a change in user behaviour would avoid the problem but
I doubt my users will remember any unintuitive or inconvenient rules
if that's what TiddlyLockPlugin really needs.

Others in this group might be better placed to clarify the
circumstances in which this can occur or how to avoid it. But it's
occurred often enough to me that I'm quite wary of using this solution
at present.

At the very least, might I suggest you implement it in a TW that
you'll use a lot and see if you encounter the same problems before
deploying it widely.

Like you I'd like to deploy in a multi-user environment but haven't
yet explored whether there are alternatives to TiddlyLockPlugin or
whether I can avoid the inconvenient lock-outs more reliably.

Good luck.

Kevin

> > W.- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -

[Ken Girard]

If the situation is that each of you is the only one who enters data
about something then you could each have a separate TW for your
account, and then use the include plugin to combine them into a
central shared TW.

I am trying to get something like this set up at work for a department
wide TW that the boss can use to see who is doing what on each
account... also so we have a central place to go when someone is out
and a call comes in asking for a status update and they don't provide
us with a lot of details. Search is a nice thing.

Ken Girard

[roger]

Kevin,
We make extensive use of TW's at my office and TiddlyLock is a
necessity for us.
Occasionally a user will be locked out of a TW when they shouldn't be,
but their are only two types of events that seem to be connected to
that problem.
We have the SetUserName plugin installed that checks the username and
if it's still set as YourName, then the user is prompted to enter
their username when they try to create or edit a tiddler. However, if
you're running tiddlylock, then the username in TW.lck gets set to
YourName, so entering a username as requested by the SetUserName
prompt, the user ends up being locked out of the TW by YourName.
Fortunately, that's not a recurring type of problem.

The more common situation we've run into is that some type of problem
occurs when saving the file. Once the TW is put into edit mode,
the .lck file is updated with the necessary information (timestamp and
username). If for some reason the file isn't saved after the edit,
then .lck never gets updated. We have autosave turned on and
ConfirmExitPlugin to assist in making sure that if a TW has been
modified, that the updated TW is saved. But if a user ignores the
prompts or a browser session crashes or something else happens that
results in the TW not being saved, then the .lck file has to be
deleted or at least the username has to be deleted from the .lck
file's content.

As for explaining to other users how to correct the problem if a TW is
locked when it shouldn't be, you could include a tiddler that explains
the solution and add it to the menu of the TW. I suppose you could
also create a batch file that deletes the .lck when it's messed up and
access the batch file with a tiddler using LaunchApplicationPlugin.
Deleting the .lck file could just be a click away. Of course, that
could be put to use when the TW really is being edited by another
user, which would frustrate the purpose of using TiddlyLock in the
first place.

~Roger

[kilucas]

Roger

This is all very helpful and I'll digest it carefully. Some of my
users are children and I'd prefer they weren't digging into the file
system behind the scenes too much. But they may be using their TWs
during the day when I'm at work and not in a position to fix rogue
locks.

So I'll weigh these options up to see if I can make my multi-user
environment more reliable.

Many thanks

Kevin

[Reenen Laurie]

Yes, I have to agree that TiddlyLock works well (enough) 99% of the time.

Only time is with name changes, which *should* only be when they use it the first time.

--
o__
,_.>/ _
(_)_\(_)_______
...speed is good
_______________
I believe five out of four people have a problem with fractions.