Forums sluggish

[blakerwry]

yeah, forums feel good... however, as I posted earlier, the server was responding fine(to me anyway) ... it was just when it had to load content that it got bogged down...

recompiling is a start... and hopefully when they recompiled they reinstalled most of the server settings and only included what they needed when they put everything back (this would hopefully clear up any misconfigurations that were slowing the server down)

I'm not sure what all packages apache comes with, but recompiling some of them might give a slight performance boost, and reinstalling them from scratch could easily fix an infinite number of problems.


Whether this is *the* fix for us is yet to be seen. Hopefully it is.

 

[SteveC]

The site was just completely down for about 20 minutes.

 

[Handruin]

I feel bad for all the dialup members. I submitted another ticket for the speed of the site. Seems to be rediculously slow right now and for the most part the site has been pokey tonight.

I don't know what is causing this. Last night the site was screaming on my end, now tonight it's a turtle. The load averages have gone back up into a constant 4 to 4 range. Last I checked it says this:

  7:23am  up 1 day, 22:58,  1 user,  load average: 18.83, 15.77, 12.64
272 processes: 269 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 2 stopped
CPU0 states:  6.4% user,  3.3% system,  0.2% nice, 90.0% idle
CPU1 states:  5.2% user, 12.1% system,  0.1% nice, 82.0% idle
Mem:  1030556K av, 1019120K used,   11436K free,       0K shrd,    9880K buff
Swap:  522072K av,  398852K used,  123220K free                  294536K cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
29288 named     16   0  110M 107M  1848 S     4.8 10.7  31:26 named
31678 handruin  16   0  1060 1060   716 R     3.2  0.1   0:10 top
31983 nobody    15   0 19380  11M 10308 D     1.7  1.1   0:00 httpd
17359 nobody    15   0 19924  12M  9136 S     0.9  1.2   0:08 httpd
    7 root      15   0     0    0     0 SW    0.5  0.0   4:52 kswapd
11610 root      34  19 59576 4604   732 D N   0.5  0.4   7:16 rsync
17387 nobody    15   0 21476  13M  9180 D     0.5  1.3   0:08 httpd
31800 eskam     15   0 14344  10M  3904 D     0.5  1.0   0:00 spamd
31981 nobody    15   0 19644  12M  9548 S     0.5  1.1   0:00 httpd
32565 mysql     15   0 14604  10M  4676 D     0.5  1.0   0:00 mysqld
21329 root      34  19  116M  19M  1944 S N   0.3  1.9   1:28 rsync
29291 named     15   0  110M 107M  1848 S     0.1 10.7  61:43 named
11640 root      34  19  116M  13M  1452 D N   0.1  1.3   1:38 rsync
17366 nobody    15   0 21000  12M  9180 S     0.1  1.2   0:06 httpd
17369 nobody    15   0 19968  11M  9352 S     0.1  1.1   0:05 httpd
17375 nobody    15   0 20876  13M  9656 S     0.1  1.2   0:04 httpd
17416 nobody    15   0 20320  12M  9156 S     0.1  1.2   0:06 httpd

 

[Handruin]

There must have been a network issue in their datacenter because all of their servers were down, not just ours.

I've actually been looking into the cost of a T-1 line, but the cost is way too high. I was considering running this site from my home...I don't know if that is feasible.

 

[blakerwry]

FWIW the site has been fine (not screaming like it was the othernoght though) all day for me.... I was at a competition earlier today though...

 

[Handruin]

I don't understand why the server is so much better now, then it was a few hours ago...

 

[blakerwry]

If you want to know my opinion it's not that big an issue. most the times the forums act fine and well tempered... and I'm a patient person.

If the forums are being reeeallly slow then I'll just come back in an hour and it is usually fine.


If the site were down, then that'd be a different issue altogether.


I'm not sure how my opinons differ from that of a new member or the "1st time browser", but I'm thinking they wont be as forgiving as I am... although probably still likely to come back if they enjoy the content.

 

[blakerwry]

just wanted to say the forums are sluggish again... i've been seeing 1 minute page loads.. although ~20-30 seconds has been the average for the last 1/2 hour mabye...

 

[mubs]

It seems to vary enormously. Fats at times, really really sluggish at others. Time of day seems to not matter.

 

[blakerwry]

For the past week i've been on the server in both the daytime and the evening to the wee hours of the morning..

I say it tends to get slow in the evening to wee hours in the morning.. during the day it's ranges from fast to fine... at night it ranges from fast to "the pits".

 

[Handruin]

I've been trying to update them everytime there is an issue, but by the time I get my support ticket typed, the forum returns to a normal speed.

I noticed this afternoon the forum was really slow around 1:00PM EST. I gave up after it took a minute+ to load each page.

I'm sorry the site has been a bit sparatic, I'm trying to get it resolved. I may request to change servers internally if this keeps up. The thing that boggles me is that no one else has complained in their support forums about the site being slow.

 

[blakerwry]

Are you allowed to tell me what other servers they host? (reverse lookup doesn't seem to be setup)

As I said before even visiting the URL http://swordfish.dnsvelocity.com/ was quite slow (considering the content) at the same time the forums were really unresponsive.. so it's not just us.

it's possible that the other virtualhosts don't get the same kind of traffic that we get (small, yet reletively constant throughout the day)

It's also possible that our site relies more on the one area that's being effected than the other sites...

just my thoughts

 

[Handruin]

It's no secret to know what servers they host. Here is a list of all of them. Some of them are dedicated servers such as cobra and alpha. (nothing we could use)

The naming is the same for all the server. xxx.dnsvelocity.com

http://info.voxtreme.com/

I'm sure it's possible for other virtual host to get less traffic. It could be that our site relies on a moderate amount of MySQL use, but it isn't overbearing. I can setup a simple page with no sql queries and a timer if you want to hit that page when the site is slow.

The front page normally loads very quick. If you notice at the very bottom of the front page is a page load timer. Normally when the site is running well the front page loads in under a second. I use that as my refference point when complaining.

 

[Handruin]

Both queries together:
http://www.storageforum.net/timer.html

Individuals:
http://www.storageforum.net/timer.php
http://www.storageforum.net/timer-sql.php

 

[Dïscfärm]

So... so... slugggggggggish...............

I ended up double-posting in the "Broadcom/Serverworks: Paradise Lost?" thread, because after over a minute of waiting, I clicked the Stop button, and then re-clicked the Submit button.

Mistake! Well, at least I now know that my messsage went into the queue and didn't get hung up in transit.

 

[blakerwry]

It's no secret to know what servers they host. Here is a list of all of them. Some of them are dedicated servers such as cobra and alpha. (nothing we could use)

The naming is the same for all the server. xxx.dnsvelocity.com

http://info.voxtreme.com/

I'm sure it's possible for other virtual host to get less traffic. It could be that our site relies on a moderate amount of MySQL use, but it isn't overbearing. I can setup a simple page with no sql queries and a timer if you want to hit that page when the site is slow.

The front page normally loads very quick. If you notice at the very bottom of the front page is a page load timer. Normally when the site is running well the front page loads in under a second. I use that as my refference point when complaining.

I meant other websites hosted on swordfish... so we could verify that they are slow when SF is slow...

heh.. that sql page loads faster every time i refresh the page(cahcing maybe)... statred off @ 2.1 secs...went to 1.7...etc...etc... till it got to a base of ~0.07 seconds...

And I'd have to say that the front page does not always load fast... It normally loads fast.. but when the forums are sluggish the front page is often sluggish as well.

 

[P5-133XL]

The forums are dog-tired today. It won't budge regardless of the threats used against it.

 

[DrunkenBastard]

Very slow right now.

 

[Handruin]

I keep complaining and they keep telling me it's caused by their nightly backup. I've been trying to figure out how to make a case to have them move us or fix the issue. I argue the point that while a backup will cause slower performance, my sites on this server should not become completely unusable.

 

[Pradeep]

I was thinking that it's prob backups, given the time of night that the slowdowns happen.

Pair.com are using shadow drives on all their servers now, and besides giving a near identical copy of the primary drives contents, also reduces the disk load at backup time, because the backup is taken from the shadow drive. Of course loads are very low at any time. Unfortunately they do have limitations on the size of SQL DBs, at least with their entry level packages.

 

[Pradeep]

Hmm I should really have read the full thread before saying anything

A load of 17 is very high, it could be due to some other users on the server overtaxing available resources. Also when you have virtual hosts, this takes up more resources.

A T1 to your apartment is going to be very expensive, unless you can resell it to your neighbours or something

Hmm I just perused one of the Voxtreme forums, I see they have banned Formmail? And they way they have done it. Looks like patching a sinking ship.

 

[Pradeep]

I'm confused how people are attacking via formmail. Why doesn't Vox require that any email recipients outside the local domain be specified in a .formmail file, or specify them directly in the script?

 

[Buck]

The site was just woefully sluggish for me. Other sites like hlmcompany.com, redhill.net.au, overclockers.com.au, and SR were just fine. The problem last for about 4 minutes.

 

[Buck]

The time of my post is off by one hour. The problem occured at:

20:14 Pacific Time

 

[Handruin]

I noticed it too. I didn't see any notification about it though. I did find that today the NAC datacenter was hit by a DoS which effected every host. THis most recent issue was probably a crash of apache because I could ping the host while it was unavialable through the web.

 

[Pradeep]

SR was giving me error messages about half an hour ago, and wierd crap like three ads up top in the forums. Seems to have been fixed now tho.

 

[Buck]

Now Pradeep has infected this thread. Every thread he posts in gets that awfully wide Author column! Don't make me go back to IE!

 

[Handruin]

Hmm I should really have read the full thread before saying anything

A load of 17 is very high, it could be due to some other users on the server overtaxing available resources. Also when you have virtual hosts, this takes up more resources.

A T1 to your apartment is going to be very expensive, unless you can resell it to your neighbours or something

Hmm I just perused one of the Voxtreme forums, I see they have banned Formmail? And they way they have done it. Looks like patching a sinking ship.

When the server runs at 17, I can't do anything at all on the site. That's what I keep complaining to them about but they don't seem to care.

The T1 idea was out of frustration. I looked at the price and it would be much cheaper to rent a dedicated server with a better connection.

I think they removed formmail. I don't know what the problem is, something with security. I don't use it so I didn't pay much attention to the topics.

 

[Bartender]

Quit complaining Buck! Have another drink.

 

[Handruin]

I'm confused how people are attacking via formmail. Why doesn't Vox require that any email recipients outside the local domain be specified in a .formmail file, or specify them directly in the script?

I thought the script could be limited to a specified range if you edit the config section. My guess is that another security issue was exploited, that or they don't want to deal with the complexities of that script.

:dunno:

 

[Pradeep]

Awfully wide? Jeeze you should prob come back to IE

I'm jsut sipping on a lubbly Bombay Sapphire and Indian tonic water. Purely for medical reasons of course... can't be too careful with that SARS about.

 

[Buck]

Awfully wide? Jeeze you should prob come back to IE

I'm jsut sipping on a lubbly Bombay Sapphire and Indian tonic water. Purely for medical reasons of course... can't be too careful with that SARS about.

:bigeek: Indeed!

 

[Bartender]

Bunch of drunks. Can't you see this is a serious thread?

 

[mubs]

Between Merc's crack and the drinkz otherz keep having, I seem to be the only zober one.

 

[Buck]

Between Merc's crack and the drinkz otherz keep having, I seem to be the only zober one.

iv ben soaber al day . . . untillll now

 

[Mercutio]

Hittin' tha rock in no way impacts my sobriety!

 

[Handruin]

Has the site been running better at nights? It seems to be a bit better later in the night. However, earlier tonight there was a separate issue where someone was running a SQL realted task that slowed down the entire server. :x

 

[Howell]

It is a bit sluggish right now.

 

[Howell]

And now it's OK. Before it would take 20-30 sec to after click to get a new page.

 

[Howell]

Scratch that. 5-10s. Normally It's less than 1s.