[drupal-devel] [bug] Private downloads aren't working

[Dan Robinson]

>
> On a related note yet slightly off-topic, someone I know is looking into
> using Drupal for a high-traffic site.  They'll have at least 5 front-end
> servers running Drupal on top of a single database.

that is a high traffic site indeed.  What are they trying to avoid by 
having 5 front ends - I'll assume total number of simultaneous http 
requests.

>   Most of their users
> use avatars and they wonder how to go about this.  If user A uploads his
> avatar to server 1, it must become immediately visible on all 5 servers.

why?  I'm trying to imagine a user interface where I would immediately 
see (or care) about a new face appearing in a gallery of thousands (my 
math is 200 simultaneous connections x 5 machines * some number that 
calcs the total number of "logged in users (who have done something in 
the last 15 minutes?).

> Using rsync did not sound like a solution, as the other servers would
> have spawned a lot of 404s by the time the avatars are synced.

well how about trapping the 404, determining if it is caused by this 
problem, and then taking default action?  I used rsync last november in 
a similar situation and was impressed at how efficient it was.

>   The
> obvious solution is to store the avatars in the database, but Drupal
> doesn't allow this and if it would, it would have a significant
> performance impact given there are pages with 100+ avatars.
>
>