PLEASE READ: Regarding forum performance issues

[Gryzor]

Hello guys,


The Problem
As you may be aware (how couldn't you) we've been facing some performance issues over the last few months; unfortunately these haven't been resolved (although they have been addressed to a large extent).


What Will be Done
Because it would seem like some of the underlying problems are unsolvable, I have decided to reinstall the forum from scratch. What this entails is: some, hopefully minimal, downtime (an hours tops I would think), and somewhat reduced functionality after that. The reason is that I will have to redo each and every one of the modifications the forum uses. But at least the forum will be fully functional.


I hope that this will solve the problems we haven't managed to pinpoint; in any case, reinstallation has been a long way in the coming. The only reason it hasn't be done is that I was waiting for SMF 2.1 to be released, but with no release in sight I guess it's time to go ahead. The forum is ageing, and it's carrying a lot of baggage.


This will be done hopefully sooner rather than later. Maybe it'll be next week, maybe it'll be in August, depending on when I find the consecutive hours needed for it. I'll let everyone know, of course.



What We Need From You
Some feedback on the problems you may be facing (if any) with the forum. I don't mean problems like "my notifications are not working" or "the ignore function is unusable" (you know who you are ), but more like server-side issues of the site not responding at all, being very slow when posting, stuff like that. This will help us better assess the situation.


Thanks!

[tastefulmrship]

What We Need From You
Some feedback on the problems you may be facing (if any) with the forum. I don't mean problems like "my notifications are not working" or "the ignore function is unusable" (you know who you are ), but more like server-side issues of the site not responding at all, being very slow when posting, stuff like that. This will help us better assess the situation.

Ah no! And we only just got it back, too! Oh well... ^_^

[Gryzor]

Well, that's built-in so it should work after reinstallation without my fixing it

[TFM]

From Scratch.... !    Well my best wishes for that. Maybe it could be a good thing to have some kind of major master backup just in case. But I'm sure you have that already.

The only issues I have form time to time is a slowdown, but at least it works. 

So thumbs up and good luck with the new installation!!! 

[GiorVam]

The only issues I have form time to time is a slowdown, but at least it works.     

Same here.....

[Gryzor]

Thanks for both the wishes and the feedback, man!


Indeed, of course, a backup will be waiting just round the corner; if anything catastrophic happens it'll just be a matter of a few commands to revert.

[Gryzor]

Same here.....

Can you be a bit more elaborate?

[Dagger]

I have had occasions where the site cannot be accessed for a few minutes at a time 

[robcfg]

We'll keep fingers crossed!


Thank you very much for creating and maintaining this lovely site! 

[||C|-|E||]

Good luck keeping the beast alive! These type of reinstalls are always a bit scary 

I have never had any major issues with the forum, to be honest. It does not load for a few minutes from time to time, but it recovers soon enough. The only issue I experimented is when creating a new message. If the attachments are not OK and I have to go back to correct them it is not possible to resubmit the corrected message and I need to write it again from scratch copy-pasting the text. There is no error message when this happens, the application decides not to go on and the button of submission is completely unresponsive. Besides this and the short down times, nothing important that I remember

[1024MAK]

For me, it's not so much slow. But for some reason it just pauses for a strangely long time when loading or refreshing a page. Meanwhile, I can visit another web site and that loads in less than 5 seconds.
For some weird reason, for me, this appears to happen more when I am using an iPad mini, rather than Firefox running on my Linux PC. Even when the iPad mini is using the home Wifi ( the Linux PC has a wired network connection) and I am less than 2M from the wifi equipped router.


Often when this does happen, after a while (30 seconds), I give up, go look at something else. Then a few minutes later, CPCWiki forum will load a page in the normal time...

The other weird thing is, this is happening even during times when I would expect the forum to not to be busy. But of course without making and keeping notes, I am being a bit subjective.

Mark

[Gryzor]

For me, it's not so much slow. But for some reason it just pauses for a strangely long time when loading or refreshing a page.

That's normal and to be expected, as the tape reaches the end and has to be rewound so that the forum loads again.




...


Thanks guys, these comments help. Can you also add how often you encounter these issues?


T


PS @1024MAK : yeah, that's one of the mysteries around this; it's not a load problem - the server is more than enough to cope with loads much much higher than the site's...

[Audronic]

""Often when this does happen, after a while (30 seconds), I give up, go look at something else. Then a few minutes later, CPCWiki forum will load a page in the normal time...""

It happens about Twice a day.This also Happens in Australia. I thought that it was a traffic thing - so I just wait.


Ray

[seanb]

In the past month I've had issues where the pm page wouldn't load or I would send a message but the page wouldn't load after clicking send so I couldn't tell it it had sent.
It had.

In the mid-morning to dinner the site either wouldn't load (rare) to it pausing it seems and I'd have to return in a few minutes.

I thought this was a traffic thing too.
Also had it where it brings back an error instead of loading the page.

I figured you was tinkering behind the scenes.

[tastefulmrship]

I have noticed the issue where the forum takes ages to load on both the UK and Norwegian servers I frequent daily.

I, too, thought it was an internet issue and continued purusing "softcore pr0n" until the CPC-Wiki page loaded.
Imagine my surprise when Gryzor said it was a CPC-Wiki issue and not the ISP gathering incriminating evidence of my inherent depravity!

[Duke]

If it's any use the server just had "hang" from ~14.45 to ~14.52 (or ~15.45 to ~15.52 board time...).

[Gryzor]

There may be times where I'm doing something behind the scenes but it's rather rare - last week, for instance, we rebooted the server after installing a metric crap ton of updates, but this took like two minutes.


Thanks for the feedback, guys, keep it coming Of special use and interest is how often you encounter these issues compared to how often you visit the forum.


Incidentally, if there are any db experts out there who specialise in optimisation do get in touch

[arnoldemu]

Just got a hang about 7 minutes ago.
The page timed out.
I had to reload it.

[Audronic]

Hi Gryzor


This connection took 10 Minutes to connect.
Timed at 12:36 19 June 2016
Thanks   Ray


Later addition
Also i was unable to connect to the WIKI also


Ray

[arnoldemu]

I was editing a message in my private message section.
It seemed loading of the data had not finished, the spinner in firefox was still going and it stopped a bit later.

[arnoldemu]

Using firefox and it's network information reveals:
- tapadetect.js -> 404 error
- Amstrad Action TYPE-IN PROJECT -> 403
- EDIT: mquote_remove.gif ->404

Oh and it retries tapadetect.js each time.
I'm still trying to work out where the time is going.

[arnoldemu]

On main forum website:

GET / 1302 ms (waiting was 1301ms)
GET Main_Page 1704 ms (waiting was 1702ms!)

These are next slowest, most of the time is waiting!

http://www.cpcwiki.eu/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=mediawiki.legacy.commonPrint%2Cshared%7Cmediawiki.sectionAnchor%7Cmediawiki.skinning.interface%7Cmediawiki.ui.button%7Cskins.vector.styles&only=styles&skin=vector&*
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/load.php?debug=false&lang=en&modules=startup&only=scripts&skin=vector&*

Others are not so bad.

But to load fully it's still going while I type this.

[arnoldemu]

Looking at the timings, there is a delay between main forum page load and the shoutbox loading. Maybe it could be temporarily turned off to see if that is causing the problem.
EDIT: Last time.

Noticed that a lot of the images are not cached?

[gerald]

Looking at the timings, there is a delay between main forum page load and the shoutbox loading. Maybe it could be temporarily turned off to see if that is causing the problem.
EDIT: Last time.

Noticed that a lot of the images are not cached?

For me the slowest is :
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?scheduled=mailq;ts=xxxxxxxxx
51048ms on my last test

Images (.gif/.png) seems all cached

[arnoldemu]

For me the slowest is :
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?scheduled=mailq;ts=xxxxxxxxx
51048ms on my last test

Images (.gif/.png) seems all cached

I saw the same link take a long time too.

I didn't see the smileys cached - well firefox didn't report them as cached. Interesting. I'll look again now.

EDIT: Images get a 304 response which indicates it's not modified. The "transferred" field in the developer section doesn't say cached but I think it means almost the same.