## Ticket Replication & Advanced Administration

*SINCE 1.4.0*

**Ticket Replication**
Gitblit does *not* provide a generic/universal replication mechanism that works across all persistence backends.

**Advanced Administration**
Gitblit does *not* provide a generic/universal for advanced administration (i.e. manually tweaking ticket data) however each service does have a strategy for that case.

### FileTicketService

#### Ticket Replication
Replication is not supported.

#### Advanced Administration
Use your favorite text editor to **carefully** manipulate a ticket's journal file.  I recommend using a JSON validation service to ensure your changes are valid JSON.

After you've done this, you will need to reset Gitblit's internal ticket cache and you may need to reindex the tickets, depending on your changes.

### BranchTicketService

#### Ticket Replication
Gitblit supports ticket replication for a couple of scenarios with the *BranchTicketService*.  This requires that the Gitblit instance receiving the ticket data be configured for the *BranchTicketService*.  Likewise, the source of the ticket data must be a repository that has ticket data persisted using the *BranchTicketService*.

##### Manually Pushing refs/meta/gitblit/tickets

Let's say you wanted to create a perfect clone of the Gitblit repository hosted at https://dev.gitblit.com in your own Gitblit instance.  We'll use this repository as an example because it is configured for the *BranchTicketService*.

**Assumptions**

1. We are pushing to our local Gitblit with the admin account, or some other privileged account
2. Our local Gitblit is configured for create-on-push
3. Our local Gitblit is configured for the *BranchTicketService*

**Procedure**

1. First we'll clone a mirror of the source repository:<pre>git clone --mirror https://dev.gitblit.com/r/gitblit.git </pre>
2. Then we'll add a remote for our local Gitblit instance:<pre>cd gitblit.git<br/>git remote add local https://localhost:8443/gitblit.git </pre>
3. Then we'll push *everything* to our local Gitblit:<pre>git push --mirror local</pre>

If your push was successful you should have a new repository with the entire official Gitblit tickets data.

##### Mirroring refs/meta/gitblit/tickets

Gitblit 1.4.0 introduces a mirroring service.  This is not the same as the federation feature - although there are similarities.

If you setup a mirror of another Gitblit repository which uses the *BranchTicketService* **AND** your Gitblit instance is configured for *BranchTicketService*, then your Gitblit will automatically fetch and reindex all tickets without intervention or further configuration.

**Things to note about mirrors...**

1. You must set *git.enableMirroring=true* and optionally change *git.mirrorPeriod*
2. Mirrors are read-only.  You can not push to a mirror.  You can not manipulate a mirror's ticket data.
3. Mirrors are a Git feature - not a Gitblit invention.  To create one you must currently use Git within your *git.repositoriesFolder*, you must reset your cache, and you must trigger a ticket reindex.<pre>git clone --mirror &lt;url&gt;<br/>curl --insecure --user admin:admin "https://localhost:8443/rpc?req=clear_repository_cache"<br/>curl --insecure --user admin:admin "https://localhost:8443/rpc?req=reindex_tickets&name=&lt;repo&gt;"</pre>
4. After you have indexed the repository, Gitblit will take over and incrementally update your tickets data on each fetch.

#### Advanced Administration
Repository owners or Gitblit administrators have the option of manually editing ticket data.  To do this you must fetch and checkout the `refs/meta/gitblit/tickets` ref.  This orphan branch is where ticket data is stored.  You may then use a text editor to **carefully** manipulate journals and push your changes back upstream.  I recommend using a JSON validation tool to ensure your changes are valid JSON.

    git fetch origin refs/meta/gitblit/tickets
    git checkout -B tix FETCH_HEAD
    ...fix data...
    git add .
    git commit
    git push origin HEAD:refs/meta/gitblit/tickets

Gitblit will identify the incoming `refs/meta/gitblit/tickets` ref update and will incrementally index the changed tickets OR, if the update is non-fast-forward, all tickets on that branch will be reindexed.

### RedisTicketService

#### Ticket Replication
Redis is capable of sophisticated replication and clustering.  I have not configured Redis replication myself.  If this topic interests you please document your procedure and open a pull request to improve this section for others who may also be interested in Redis replication.

#### Advanced Administration
You can directly manipulate the journals in Redis.  The most convenient way do manipulate data is using the simple, but very competent, [RedisDesktopManager](http://redisdesktop.com).  It even provides JSON pretty printing which faciliates editing.

After you've done this, you will need to reset Gitblit's internal ticket cache and you may need to reindex the tickets, depending on your changes.

The schema of the Redis backend looks like this *repository:object:id*.

    redis 127.0.0.1:6379> keys *
    1) "~james/mytickets.git:ticket:8"
    2) "~james/mytickets.git:journal:8"
    3) "~james/mytickets.git:ticket:4"
    4) "~james/mytickets.git:counter"
    5) "~james/mytickets.git:journal:2"
    6) "~james/mytickets.git:journal:4"
    7) "~james/mytickets.git:journal:7"
    8) "~james/mytickets.git:ticket:3"
    9) "~james/mytickets.git:ticket:6"
    10) "~james/mytickets.git:journal:1"
    11) "~james/mytickets.git:ticket:2"
    12) "~james/mytickets.git:journal:6"
    13) "~james/mytickets.git:ticket:7"
    14) "~james/mytickets.git:ticket:1"
    15) "~james/mytickets.git:journal:3"

**Some notes about the Redis backend**
The *ticket* object keys are provided as a convenience for integration with other systems.  Gitblit does not read those keys, but it does update them.

The *journal* object keys are the important ones.  Gitblit maintains ticket change journals.  The *journal* object keys are Redis LISTs where each list entry is a JSON change document.

The other important object key is the *counter* which is used to assign ticket ids.

### Resetting the Tickets Cache and Reindexing Tickets

Reindexing can be memory exhaustive.  It obviously depends on the number of tickets you have.  Normally, you won't need to manually reindex but if you do, offline reindexing is recommended.

#### Offline Reindexing

##### Gitblit GO

Gitblit GO ships with a script that executes the *com.gitblit.ReindexTickets* tool included in the Gitblit jar file.  This tool will reindex *all* tickets in *all* repositories **AND** must be run when Gitblit is offline.

    reindex-tickets <baseFolder>

##### Gitblit WAR/Express

Gitblit WAR/Express does not ship with anything other than the WAR, but you can still reindex tickets offline with a little extra effort.

*Windows*

    java -cp "C:/path/to/WEB-INF/lib/*" com.gitblit.ReindexTickets --baseFolder <baseFolder>

*Linux/Unix/Mac OSX*

    java -cp /path/to/WEB-INF/lib/* com.gitblit.ReindexTickets --baseFolder <baseFolder>

#### Live Reindexing

You can trigger a live reindex of tickets for any backend using Gitblit's RPC interface and curl or your browser.  This will also reset Gitblit's internal ticket cache.  Use of this RPC requires *web.enableRpcServlet=true* and *web.enableRpcManagement=true* along with administrator credentials.

    curl --insecure --user admin:admin "https://localhost:8443/rpc?req=reindex_tickets"
    curl --insecure --user admin:admin "https://localhost:8443/rpc?req=reindex_tickets&name=gitblit.git"

#### Migrating Tickets between Ticket Services

##### Gitblit GO

Gitblit GO ships with a script that executes the *com.gitblit.MigrateTickets* tool included in the Gitblit jar file.  This tool will migrate *all* tickets in *all* repositories **AND** must be run when Gitblit is offline.

    migrate-tickets <outputservice> <baseFolder>

For example, this would migrate tickets from the current ticket service configured in `c:\gitblit-data\gitblit.properties` to a Redis ticket service.  The Redis service is configured in the same config file so you must be sure to properly setup all appropriate Redis settings.

    migrate-tickets com.gitblit.tickets.RedisTicketService c:\gitblit-data

##### Gitblit WAR

Gitblit WAR does not ship with anything other than the WAR, but you can still migrate tickets offline with a little extra effort.

*Windows*

    java -cp "C:/path/to/WEB-INF/lib/*" com.gitblit.MigrateTickets <outputservice> --baseFolder <baseFolder>

*Linux/Unix/Mac OSX*

    java -cp /path/to/WEB-INF/lib/* com.gitblit.MigrateTickets <outputservice> --baseFolder <baseFolder>