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!
Quote from: Gryzor on 18:06, 17 June 16
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... ^_^
Well, that's built-in so it should work after reinstallation without my fixing it :)
From Scratch.... ! :o 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!!! :) :) :)
Quote from: TFM on 18:40, 17 June 16The only issues I have form time to time is a slowdown, but at least it works.
Same here.....
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.
Quote from: GiorVam on 18:43, 17 June 16
Same here.....
Can you be a bit more elaborate?
I have had occasions where the site cannot be accessed for a few minutes at a time
We'll keep fingers crossed!
Thank you very much for creating and maintaining this lovely site! 8)
Good luck keeping the beast alive! These type of reinstalls are always a bit scary :D
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 :)
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
Quote from: 1024MAK on 00:06, 18 June 16
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 (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1522) : 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...
""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
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.
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!
If it's any use the server just had "hang" from ~14.45 to ~14.52 (or ~15.45 to ~15.52 board time...).
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 ;)
Just got a hang about 7 minutes ago.
The page timed out.
I had to reload it.
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
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.
Using firefox and it's network information reveals:
- tapadetect.js -> 404 error
- Amstrad Action TYPE-IN PROJECT (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/cpcwiki-discussion/please-read-regarding-forum-performance-issues/?prev_next=next) -> 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.
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=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&* (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.
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?
Quote from: arnoldemu on 11:32, 19 June 16
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 (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?scheduled=mailq;ts=xxxxxxxxx)
51048ms on my last test
Images (.gif/.png) seems all cached
Quote from: gerald on 12:39, 19 June 16
For me the slowest is :
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?scheduled=mailq;ts=xxxxxxxxx (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.
So, the time today between pressing the REPLY button and getting the edit box was less than a second. This at 12:48 UK (BST) on a iPad mini via my home wifi connecting via broadband.
Yesterday it was a different story. I hit reply at 13:42. As it stalled, I took a picture (13:43), but this forum won't let me attach it from an iPad mini :(
Eventually the page with the edit box did load, (at 13:46) but by then I had forgotten what I wanted to write :laugh: :
The problem with attaching photos appears to be the file extension being .jpeg rather than .jpg but I will have to investigate further to be sure.
Mark
To be sure, the mobile interface is more of a hack so I wouldn't be surprised if there were such issues; most people seem happy enough to just use tapatalk for mobile browsing.
As for images being cached etc; the problem is not with loading resources, according to ALL the benchmarkings I've done. The problem is with waiting for a response. The server is fast enough as is the pipeline it's attached to. "Waiting for a response" in our case means waiting for the database to process some queries. Now, the weird part is, those slow queries are different every time, and also they're pretty mundane ones -nothing in them would justify hanging up the db for minutes at a time...
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1): Is it possible to clean and/or rebuild the database?
Perhaps some optimisation pass like striping it?
Here are the screen shots. I emailed them to myself on a PC, and in the email they have .JPG file extensions, so maybe it is just a problem between the Apple iPad and the forum.
[attach=2]
[attach=3]
Mark
@arnoldemu (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=122) : the database is cleaned as a cron job frequently and all unnecessary data is cleaned. I'm not sure rebuilding it would yield anything - if I'm not mistaken you rebuild your affected tables when something basic has changed, not as a maintenance process? But I may be wrong.
No idea about strip, I should look into it perhaps :)
@1024MAK (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1522) : what am I looking at here? :)
The main purpose of the screen shots was to show the page I was on and the time (at the top). Nothing more.
Of course, since posting, so far the forum has been behaving itself, at least for me.
Mark
Oh, I see. But a troubling aspect of the problem is that the slowdowns are totally random, from the looks of it. I think (not sure if I've enabled it for myself only) that at the bottom of the page you can see how long it takes to generate a page; this page I'm typing on right now, for instance, took 0.042 seconds to generate, with 31 queries on it. Server in under a second. Yet the slowdown could well occur on it at some random point, taking minutes for it to be generated...
By the way, the only real "issue" that benchmarking the site reveals is that the TopSites button takes a while to load. Similar benchmarks say that @Devilmarkus (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=93) 's server is a bit slow to respond, BUT that's not the culprit as the page loads all the other elements concurrently. And it's not such a big slowdown anyhow, so the problem is not resource loading...
The server has just come back to normal after about 5 to 6 minutes of no reaction.
Bryce.
same here
Ray
Quote from: Gryzor on 10:01, 20 June 16
@arnoldemu (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=122) : the database is cleaned as a cron job frequently and all unnecessary data is cleaned. I'm not sure rebuilding it would yield anything - if I'm not mistaken you rebuild your affected tables when something basic has changed, not as a maintenance process? But I may be wrong.
No idea about strip, I should look into it perhaps :)
I wondered if rebuilding the database would help, a bit like defragging a hard disk.
The "strip" may be called "striping" or "stripeing".
This is where the files are spread accross multiple drives but you may not have control over that.
btw @Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1): consider changing the shoutbox.
It appears to be shockwave flash (swf file) and it has a mp3 as one of the files???
and it causes a reload every second or so when the activity in the shoutbox doesn't need that.
About the delays: What do the server access logs look like? Can you view the traffic in/out at specific times to see why quite a few people have a problem at the same time?
Is there any "load" (as in cpu time) graphs that you can look at?
why do you think it's definitely database times?
I have a feeling that it's some service or script that runs on the server. It seems to happen at about the same time most days. Maybe not on our exact server, but on some part of the providers system.
Bryce.
I just got another delay. 13:41 local time.
and again at 15:3X 15:43
Both the Wiki and the forum
Ray
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:25, 20 June 16
btw @Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1): consider changing the shoutbox.
It appears to be shockwave flash (swf file) and it has a mp3 as one of the files???
and it causes a reload every second or so when the activity in the shoutbox doesn't need that.
I'm not a fan of the shoutbox, but people seem to like it. I would take it out, but: yes it's a swf and it's rather heavy, but it doesn't seem to impact things that much. For instance, I just loaded the forum homepage and I got: "Page created in 0.033 seconds with 15 queries.". Served in about one second...
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:25, 20 June 16
About the delays: What do the server access logs look like? Can you view the traffic in/out at specific times to see why quite a few people have a problem at the same time?
Is there any "load" (as in cpu time) graphs that you can look at?
why do you think it's definitely database times?
Yes, I see all the graphs there are to see, and there's no correlation with traffic etc; the server is more than enough to handle it... It'd the database because I see that SQL is gobbling up CPU cycles and when this happens the query backlog grows quite a bit before being inexplicably released. I've talked about it with the SMF devs and they have no idea why it would do that...
Quote from: arnoldemu on 13:18, 20 June 16
I wondered if rebuilding the database would help, a bit like defragging a hard disk.
The "strip" may be called "striping" or "stripeing".
This is where the files are spread accross multiple drives but you may not have control over that.
We could buy, I think, a second drive, but it wouldn't help things; our database, though large enough, is nowhere near the levels where db splitting is prescribed. Also we would not gain anything in terms of CPU (the opposite probably), just on HDD load which is not an issue.
Quote from: Bryce on 13:26, 20 June 16
I have a feeling that it's some service or script that runs on the server. It seems to happen at about the same time most days. Maybe not on our exact server, but on some part of the providers system.
Bryce.
As far as I've seen the problematic times are rather random, even people from Australia have contacted me during their daytime. Also, a script running on the host's network somewhere would not affect our server which is standalone...
Quote from: Audronic on 13:44, 20 June 16
and again at 15:3X 15:43
Both the Wiki and the forum
Yes, when the db is overloaded the engine stops serving whatever uses a db on the server.
What DB engine is it? SQL tuning tends to be very specific to the system being used. I'm mostly an MS SQL person, but happy to help if I can.
It just took 55 seconds to reload the front page.
The forum was unresponsive in total for about 3 minutes.
I tap reload when I get impatient.
1:16 am this happened.
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1): this is almost related. Do you know if personal messages are causing a problem with the database?
I have 55 pages of personal messages. :o Sorry.
I will try and delete them all this weekend.
Quote from: arnoldemu on 11:22, 22 June 16
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1): this is almost related. Do you know if personal messages are causing a problem with the database?
I have 55 pages of personal messages. :o Sorry.
I will try and delete them all this weekend.
Only 55? Oops, I have quite a few more.
Bryce.
Quote from: Bryce on 12:10, 20 June 16
The server has just come back to normal after about 5 to 6 minutes of no reaction.
Bryce.
Ok, the dropout yesterday was at 13:05. Today it was at 13:00. That's close enough for me to be predictable. Let's see what happens tomorrow between 13:00 and 13:05.
Bryce.
P.s. My inbox now only has 30 pages :)
Edit: Now down to just 2 pages of PMs and I'm pretty sure I'Ve deleted some that I still needed! :D
I experimented a problem with the server today as well, but it was much earlier... at 10:33 in UK. It was not responding for a few minutes, then it went back to normal :)
@Bryce (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=225): Don't forget sent. I had 9 pages in sent.
So now I'm currently down to 0 pages in sent and 45 pages in inbox. I'll delete more later :)
edit: 24 pages now.
I rarely save sent PMs, I only have about 3 pages of these.
Bryce.
Edit: and the server stopped reacting again from 16:29 until 16:36.
Quote from: Bryce on 15:26, 22 June 16
I rarely save sent PMs, I only have about 3 pages of these.
Bryce.
Edit: and the server stopped reacting again from 16:29 until 16:36.
I wonder what would happen to the server responsiveness if everyone deleted all their sent PMs and reduced the size of all inbox PMs???
Maybe this is the cause?
I'm down to 14 pages now :)
Or maybe the problem is that people constantly upload pictues in the size of many Megabytes?. PMs are only text. :)
Picture size is always a problem, even if the server is responding OK. I like to upload pictures from time to time, but I always try to keep them below 400KB to let the server live :)
Quote from: ||C|-|E|| on 17:11, 22 June 16
Picture size is always a problem, even if the server is responding OK. I like to upload pictures from time to time, but I always try to keep them below 400KB to let the server live :)
Especially since we're already forced to crunch 200 KB disc images and 16 KB ROM images, else we can't upload and the typed in text of the post is lost when the system displays a file-type error. :)
If it was a problem with PMs or uploaded pictures it would always be there. However the problem is that the server goes from very responsive to (essentially) offline for 5 to 7 minutes at a time several times a day. This has nothing to do with the amount of PMs or pictures.
Bryce.
Quote from: Bryce on 20:24, 22 June 16
If it was a problem with PMs or uploaded pictures it would always be there. However the problem is that the server goes from very responsive to (essentially) offline for 5 to 7 minutes at a time several times a day. This has nothing to do with the amount of PMs or pictures.
Bryce.
My thoughts were that people who had a high number of PMs happened to access the forum at the same or similar times. The server was quering the database to see if there are new messages for each person and this was causing a stall. All of this is speculation of course.
Quote from: Bryce on 20:24, 22 June 16
If it was a problem with PMs or uploaded pictures it would always be there. However the problem is that the server goes from very responsive to (essentially) offline for 5 to 7 minutes at a time several times a day. This has nothing to do with the amount of PMs or pictures.
Bryce.
And why not? If there is a time (or times) when everybody looks at a thread with lots of pictures then if overwhelms the servers and it locks up. If you disagree, what could it be then??
You can see how many people are online and even reading the same thread as you. The slow downs aren't related to either.
Bryce.
Quote from: TFM on 17:04, 22 June 16
... PMs are only text. :)
Well, modern computers like CPC store text as bitmap on screen so 500 chars need 16k instead of 0,5 :D
The pictures are definitely not killing the server :) They can cause a slowdown if they are huge and in general they can make a post to load slower, so it is always good to keep them withing a reasonable size. However, in this case we suffer from complete blackouts, that is something different :( .
So I have a total of 15 messages, and often the thread I am accessing has no large or indeed any pictures apart from the icons and pictures in people's signatures.
So I don't think either is relevant. Also the long pause appears to occur anywhere in the downloading process. Sometimes half a page loads. Other times very little of the page loads. And worst of all, sometimes it does it when attempting to send a reply :'(
Quote from: Bryce on 12:20, 22 June 16
Ok, the dropout yesterday was at 13:05. Today it was at 13:00. That's close enough for me to be predictable. Let's see what happens tomorrow between 13:00 and 13:05.
Just a coincidence, actually, from the looks of it. Some times I wake up and find alerts that the server was down during the night, sometimes I get notifications while I'm having dinner and so on. Just took a look at the graphs, they don't show a pattern.
Quote from: andycadley on 17:07, 21 June 16
What DB engine is it? SQL tuning tends to be very specific to the system being used. I'm mostly an MS SQL person, but happy to help if I can.
We use MariaDB. If you have any idea about troubleshooting slow queries, do let me know :)
Quote from: arnoldemu on 11:22, 22 June 16
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1): this is almost related. Do you know if personal messages are causing a problem with the database?
I have 55 pages of personal messages. :o Sorry.
I will try and delete them all this weekend.
Highy, highly unlikely. The queries I had seen don't show something of the sort, plus in any case there are threads longer than 55 pages. This gave me an idea, I lowered the number of posts/threads per page, just to check things out....
Quote from: arnoldemu on 21:04, 22 June 16
My thoughts were that people who had a high number of PMs happened to access the forum at the same or similar times. The server was quering the database to see if there are new messages for each person and this was causing a stall. All of this is speculation of course.
If we had thousands of users doing that all at once it'd make some sense, but as it is it doesn't. As I said before, for some reason some perfectly sensible queries just take huge amounts of time to execute - it's not that there's a huge number of queries. As a matter of fact I've optimised the forum since a long time ago to reduce the number of queries used as much as possible, and I'd say we're at very ok levels.
Quote from: ||C|-|E|| on 17:11, 22 June 16
Picture size is always a problem, even if the server is responding OK. I like to upload pictures from time to time, but I always try to keep them below 400KB to let the server live :)
True. Serving pictures would be a bandwidth issue and (to a much lesser extent) a CPU issue as Apache is pushing things around. But we're nowhere near our limits, and the pictures are not stored in the database...
Before, I had to waid many minutes and sometime the loading failled.
Now, I have to waid some seconds... It is cool.
This wait time was happening on the Previous server.
I just thought i was to far away ?
Ray
Quote from: Audronic on 09:46, 23 June 16
This wait time was happening on the Previous server.
I just thought i was to far away ?
Ray
Sorry, not sure what you mean?
Some months ago i thought that you changed servers or providers, the Problem was there on the old server- Provider.
Does that make sense or have i imagined it ?
Ray
Ah no, we changed servers because the old one was getting waaay too old and was very expensive for what it was offering...
OK, when we were on the OLD server the same problems were happening there.
I hope that this helps.
Ray
Well, depends on the period, we did have some issues but nothing as serious as this.
If you think our Forum is slow, try connecting to xe.com or any of the other currency conversion sites this morning :D
Bryce.
Heh, 36 seconds before giving an error....
xe.com is indeed on fire today! ;D
Heheh we noticed the XE issues first thing in the morning (I work for a financial company)... it's a bit better now, I guess they upped some limits for their database :D
By the way, I realised I said something that wasn't true some pages earlier: when the problem occurs, the CPU spikes indeed, but again it's nowhere near any levels that should cause issues. We're talking maybe about 20 or 30%. It's just that it takes a looong time to process the query...
Sounds like file resp. database i/o performance issues to me.
Quote from: Gryzor on 10:25, 24 June 16It's just that it takes a looong time to process the query...
Just some random thoughts about this:
- Is there anything clogging up files-system IO when it happens? (eg. backup script or stats/monitoring script)
- And nothing in the DB's logs would indicate if it is often (re-)building huge index/temp tables? (you might have to change the log level setting and restart the DB to get these information).
- Try the EXPLAIN command on a query that sometime takes too long to execute.
- Maybe check if there's no unusual amount of HTTP requests when it happens? (such as h4x0rz scripts brute-forcing the auth to the admin panel or other well-known vulnerabilities)
- Also the default MariaDB configuration might not be adequate anymore with the growing size/traffic of the forum and would require some tweaking?
Tough problem to figure out, may Nelson be with you! :)
Not sure if it relates to the performance issues, but I just went into my account settings to view my posts and when I clicked on Drafts, I found 4 Pages of stuff, some of that was old too.
So I'm just wondering if that's happening, how many people are unknowingly building up this clutter? Can Admin see those posts and/or cleanse (get rid of) those kinds of posts?
Hey, I just checked too and had 5 pages of drafts??? Why is the system creating drafts at all?
Bryce.
Quote from: Bryce on 13:43, 27 June 16
Hey, I just checked too and had 5 pages of drafts??? Why is the system creating drafts at all?
Bryce.
I have 8 pages of drafts.
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1): I never knew they were there and there is no easy way to delete them except 1 by 1?
Crazy thing is that my drafts seem to repeat. Lots have identical content. I am sure the forum is automatically saving them as I type, but it doesn't need to keep each character I type!
Quote from: Grim on 16:09, 24 June 16
- Is there anything clogging up files-system IO when it happens? (eg. backup script or stats/monitoring script)
- And nothing in the DB's logs would indicate if it is often (re-)building huge index/temp tables? (you might have to change the log level setting and restart the DB to get these information).
- Try the EXPLAIN command on a query that sometime takes too long to execute.
- Maybe check if there's no unusual amount of HTTP requests when it happens? (such as h4x0rz scripts brute-forcing the auth to the admin panel or other well-known vulnerabilities)
- Also the default MariaDB configuration might not be adequate anymore with the growing size/traffic of the forum and would require some tweaking?
Good points. Lemme answer them....
- No, there was monitoring set up but only after the problems appeared (and it was turned off once we saw all we could). Backing the system up happens during the small hours (Europe time), but even then it's not a big deal - it's an rsync basically so not very many changes. Database is backed up in under 30 seconds for both the forum and the wiki, so it's not that either.
- Nope.
- didn't offer any insight. Basically we saw that the system was trying, say, to locate one member in the table and add one like to the relevant value. That was all.
- This used to happen a long time ago, we did put some systems in place, and indeed Apache was shooting up in resource usage. But the problem is not there, the problem is indeed with the database. It's not like the queue gets so big things get clogged up; it's that random queries take very long to execute... so even if it was a kind of DDoS thing, queries should take a reasonable amount of time to execute given the resources allocated.
- yes, indeed - it got tweaked already :D But the size of the forum is not big enough to cause problems by itself!
Now, congratulations guys, you found the drafts feature :D
Truth be told, it wasn't working properly when I installed it, so I didn't tell people; then, I forgot about it. Probably something I changed made it work!!!
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1)
Today Now I was unable to look at a Pm at Exactly 03:00 this morning your time , I was unable to progress until approx. 8 Minutes later.
Hope that this helps
I opened a new Tab and went to the Wiki which took about 10 seconds to open (normally about 1 second) at about 03:08 .
Good luck ray
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1)
Is there any progress on getting alerts for Pms etc via email.
Thanks Ray
Quote from: Gryzor on 14:11, 28 June 16
Now, congratulations guys, you found the drafts feature :D
Truth be told, it wasn't working properly when I installed it, so I didn't tell people; then, I forgot about it. Probably something I changed made it work!!!
Unfortunately I didn't make a note of when these Drafts started occurring, but noticed I have them dating back in 2014.
Mine went from early 2014 to 2016. Haven't had any new ones since I deleted them all though.
Bryce.
Quote from: Audronic on 01:38, 29 June 16
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1)
Is there any progress on getting alerts for Pms etc via email.
No, not yet; first I'll be reinstalling the forum, then I'll deal with email once I know the forum works perfectly...
Quote from: Gryzor on 12:02, 01 July 16
No, not yet; first I'll be reinstalling the forum, then I'll deal with email once I know the forum works perfectly...
I noticed the ignore feature started functioning, unfortunately I cannot give specific date or month, think it started happening in May.
Hello guys!
Long time no see. Just got back from my vacation and I'm seriously thinking of going back to the island I missed you all.
One of the things I was going to do upon my return was to prepare for the forum re-installation.
However... is it my idea or has been the forum much stabler over the past few weeks?
Quote from: Gryzor on 15:43, 01 August 16
Hello guys!
Long time no see. Just got back from my vacation and I'm seriously thinking of going back to the island I missed you all.
One of the things I was going to do upon my return was to prepare for the forum re-installation.
However... is it my idea or has been the forum much stabler over the past few weeks?
Not really, it's still really sluggish/unresponsive at times.
It may be perception, but when there is an interesting thread that I want to see or reply to, the forum sometimes appears to take an age to respond.
But if it is just me checking the main page to see what recent activity there has been, it appears to be okay in terms of response.
@Gryzor (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1), Oh, nearly forgot, I hope you had a nice holiday :-)
Maybe helpful:
I try to access the forum+site at 7:56 and 8:10 but get no response :( (UTC+2)
I tried the links:
http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php)
AMSDOS Memory Map - CPCWiki (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/index.php/AMSDOS_Memory_Map)
Tapatalk doesn't response too
Quote from: Gryzor on 15:43, 01 August 16
Hello guys!
Long time no see. Just got back from my vacation and I'm seriously thinking of going back to the island I missed you all.
One of the things I was going to do upon my return was to prepare for the forum re-installation.
However... is it my idea or has been the forum much stabler over the past few weeks?
Here & there.
I wasn't sure if you've seen this bug from the Recent Forum Topics, I don't know what's doing it, and I'm unsure if it's rearing it's ugly head on different pages, this screenshot shots Topics 31-37 for example and if I go to Page 5, it continues 41-50, which is leaving a void of unseen Forum Topics.
[attachimg=1]
I had problems loading the forum home / index page this morning at 06:55 UK time :-(
Mark
It took 9 minutes one night to load the main page and just now 12:55pm it took 2 minutes to access the raspberry pi thread.
Thanks guys, so it seems the issue remains; I was asking because my monitors didn't warn me about any downtime while I was away. Of course they're not 100% reliable - there's a threshold and they don't check every second, but I usually do get a notification - it seems it was just pure coincidence. Ok, I will do something about it...
@1024MAK (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=1522) : thanks man, yeah, it was awesome :D
@AMSDOS (http://www.cpcwiki.eu/forum/index.php?action=profile;u=330) : that's a separate issue, if you want report it somewhere else, though I don't think it's a problem - if you click on '6' it should show '7' and the rest I guess.
In my hands I feel that it has been much more stable during the past days, I did not experiment any performance issue. Too bad that this did not happen to all of us :'(
Down time was about 1pm gmt today. Gave up after 25 mins
Today was just a random fluke on the part of the host, a problem with the account - they solved it as soon as I found out :)