Grouper Users - Open Discussion List

[Peter DiCamillo <>]

Tom Zeller wrote:
> > What confused me is that the -name option allows you to dump and then
> > restore just a subtree of the registry.  That implied to me that I could use
> > XML export and import to recreate one subtree of a registry, and recreate
> > other subtrees using different methods, such as manually or using local
> > provisioning programs.
>
> As you've shown already, the import code seems easy enough to change.
>
> I'm curious about your use case - what is the motivation for
> recreating groups using manual or other methods ? Is this a one-time
> issue for the 1.3 upgrade ?

This is definitely a one-time issue for the upgrade.  I encountered this 
when I was doing initial testing of XML export and import.  We have a 
small program we run to initialize an empty registry.  It creates and 
populates the sysadmingroup, and few other admin groups we use.  It also 
creates the group types we use.  Before doing the testing, I ran that 
program so I could use the UI.  The problem was that some of the groups 
I used to test export/import included as members some of the admin 
groups I had already created.  I might not even need the code change now 
that I understand the issues.

A related problem I encountered is that I'm unable to dump the entire 
registry.  (That's why I was testing with -name.)  We have a very large 
number of groups, and I did a rough calculation that it would take 32 
hours to dump them all.  If I try a full dump, after about 6 hours it 
stops without any useful info in the logs.  I don't still have the logs, 
but I just get the high-level "unable to export to xml" error message 
and an unspecific exception message.  I tried dumping the incomplete 
group at the end of the xml file, and it dumped without any errors. 
That suggests to me something difficult to debug, like maybe a memory 
leak.  Since I only need to get this to work for the upgrade,  I've been 
testing dumping stems with -name (so any single dump doesn't run for 
many hours) rather than dumping the entire registry at once, and that's 
been working.  Given the long running time and the need to use -name 
with the dumps, I've also been considering using provisioning to 
recreate some of the groups.

Peter