[consulting] scaling sites with restricted downloads

[Bèr Kessels]

Op donderdag 30 maart 2006 18:45, schreef Laura Scott:
> 1) We're about to build two different music community sites that are  
> going to need to start small but (obviously) be able to scale.  
> Controlling access to uploaded mp3s etc. will be key aspects of this  
> install. To (hopefully) reduce their server needs -- because, after  
> all, they're musicians and thus aren't exactly flush -- I'm  
> considering using public fileserver settings, and chmod-ing the  
> folder to limit access to only via Drupal. Would that work? Are there  
> limitations to this approach?

The architecture of betterupload has tackled this issue. 
Every module can decide per file if it is private or not. 
file://foo.png is the "drupal path" to a global file
pfile://foo.png is a "drupal path" to a private file. 
(more options: mysql://table/id,  to store a file in your DB or 
http://example.com/foo.png to link to a remote file)

however, the problem that drupal is loaded for each pfile:// remains.

But.... this is IMO a general issue for drupal. I recently got hammered 
(webschuur.com has been down more then up) by several RSS spiders. for EACH 
feed complete drupal is loaded. Same goes for "dynamically generated CSS or 
JS. We need a FILE_SERVER or so bootstrap, where drupal is loaded in file 
server mode. possibly only fetching some cached thing from a DB, or so.

So: betterupload has plans for solving your problem by making it possible to 
treat only a few files as private, but the performance issues for those few 
files need to be solved elsewhere. 

Bèr