READ THIS: ANOTHER NEW HOST TEST!!

Post by **Rob Wilson** » 2003-03-15 02:45am

OK I've done a series of Sorts and Searches in multiple windows and again everything sems fine. On the graphics side, the only one that has trouble refreshing is the 1000 Mixed Smileys, Can someone with a suitably high Connection confirm that that one is the the only one that causes problems (the rest are smooth right now, though it was a short test.) The Smiley posts are in the Test Boards SW vs ST Forum as announcements (they have ben heavily signposted to keep out the unwary

).

I'll keep testing at random periods throughout today.

Brother-Captain Gaius · Post by **Brother-Captain Gaius** » 2003-03-15 02:55am

Rob Wilson wrote:OK I've done a series of Sorts and Searches in multiple windows and again everything sems fine. On the graphics side, the only one that has trouble refreshing is the 1000 Mixed Smileys, Can someone with a suitably high Connection confirm that that one is the the only one that causes problems (the rest are smooth right now, though it was a short test.) The Smiley posts are in the Test Boards SW vs ST Forum as announcements (they have ben heavily signposted to keep out the unwary ).

I'll keep testing at random periods throughout today.

On cable here, the 500 smiley ones load instantly, the 1000 took a little less than a second.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-03-15 03:36am

JediNeophyte wrote:
Rob Wilson wrote:OK I've done a series of Sorts and Searches in multiple windows and again everything sems fine. On the graphics side, the only one that has trouble refreshing is the 1000 Mixed Smileys, Can someone with a suitably high Connection confirm that that one is the the only one that causes problems (the rest are smooth right now, though it was a short test.) The Smiley posts are in the Test Boards SW vs ST Forum as announcements (they have ben heavily signposted to keep out the unwary ).

I'll keep testing at random periods throughout today.
On cable here, the 500 smiley ones load instantly, the 1000 took a little less than a second.

looks at 56k connection
You bastard...

Post by **Rob Wilson** » 2003-03-15 10:25am

JediNeophyte wrote:
Rob Wilson wrote:OK I've done a series of Sorts and Searches in multiple windows and again everything sems fine. On the graphics side, the only one that has trouble refreshing is the 1000 Mixed Smileys, Can someone with a suitably high Connection confirm that that one is the the only one that causes problems (the rest are smooth right now, though it was a short test.) The Smiley posts are in the Test Boards SW vs ST Forum as announcements (they have ben heavily signposted to keep out the unwary ).

I'll keep testing at random periods throughout today.
On cable here, the 500 smiley ones load instantly, the 1000 took a little less than a second.

yeah, I'm doing them on multiple windows to simulate a group accessing them at once (or near it). But your numbers are consistent with my earlier ones for single access opening and refresh, it'll be interesting to see what happens during the normal US traffic hours though.

Anyone else with a Half-meg and above connection feel free to try them, I just wanted to make sure no Dial-ups hit them by mistake.

Post by **Rob Wilson** » 2003-03-15 10:26am

Stuart Mackey wrote:
JediNeophyte wrote:
Rob Wilson wrote:OK I've done a series of Sorts and Searches in multiple windows and again everything sems fine. On the graphics side, the only one that has trouble refreshing is the 1000 Mixed Smileys, Can someone with a suitably high Connection confirm that that one is the the only one that causes problems (the rest are smooth right now, though it was a short test.) The Smiley posts are in the Test Boards SW vs ST Forum as announcements (they have ben heavily signposted to keep out the unwary ).

I'll keep testing at random periods throughout today.
On cable here, the 500 smiley ones load instantly, the 1000 took a little less than a second.
looks at 56k connection
You bastard...

That's why they're signposted. Or was that an expression of cable envy?

Post by **Rob Wilson** » 2003-03-15 11:01am

closet sci-fi fan wrote:It gets a little slow after multiposting.

Yeah, at 15:54 GMT (incase MJ wants to zero in on a specifc datum in his servers traffic logs) it dropped to white screen for the first time ever and hasn't yet recovered (either in the smiley posts or the other forums for opening posts) at 16:02 GMT.

ADDENDUM : it recovered at 16:05 GMT, but for now I'm going to do the Search and Sorts at different times to the Smiley refreshes to be safe for the next 10 minutes or so.

Post by **Rob Wilson** » 2003-03-15 11:50am

closet sci-fi fan wrote:I think I might have had something to do with it.. I just made a 83 post multi-post.

Now it refuses to post anything else I submit.

That could explain why it's chugging along fine now.

Cpt_Frank · Post by **Cpt_Frank** » 2003-03-15 12:15pm

hey it's running fine now.

Stuart Mackey · Post by **Stuart Mackey** » 2003-03-15 10:20pm

Rob Wilson wrote:
That's why they're signposted. Or was that an expression of cable envy?

looks down

sigh

Darth Yoshi · Post by **Darth Yoshi** » 2003-03-16 01:33am

The test server works well enough for me, and the current server is pretty slow for me.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-03-17 12:51am

So, isn't this thread rather obsolete now?

Post by **AdmiralKanos** » 2003-03-17 12:54am

Yes. I only hope this server is better than the last one. If there are still problems, then I have one last ace in the hole: I can set up a dedicated server on a DSL line in my house and use DynDNS in order to map a CNAME DNS entry to it. Then I have complete use of the CPU, and I might even get ambitious and try to go for MySQL 4.01 with InnoDB (full transaction support, row-locking ... fap fap fap).

neoolong · Post by **neoolong** » 2003-03-17 12:57am

Great. Let's hope this works better.

Pcm979 · Post by **Pcm979** » 2003-03-17 01:01am

Sounds good.

Crayz9000 · Post by **Crayz9000** » 2003-03-17 01:37am

AdmiralKanos wrote:Yes. I only hope this server is better than the last one. If there are still problems, then I have one last ace in the hole: I can set up a dedicated server on a DSL line in my house and use DynDNS in order to map a CNAME DNS entry to it.

How fast is your DSL line? With the bandwidth this thing requires, I'd guess a T1 would be almost the minimum...

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-17 01:39am

Crayz9000 wrote:
AdmiralKanos wrote:Yes. I only hope this server is better than the last one. If there are still problems, then I have one last ace in the hole: I can set up a dedicated server on a DSL line in my house and use DynDNS in order to map a CNAME DNS entry to it.
How fast is your DSL line? With the bandwidth this thing requires, I'd guess a T1 would be almost the minimum...

640kbps upload. Granted, that's only a third of a T1 line, but with mod_gzip I would hope it's workable. The problem I see right now is that every server I've been using lately has been bogging down on database queries and CPU utilization, not bandwidth.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2003-03-17 01:43am

So far I have had more 'cannot find server' pages on this new server in a row than I did in the other one. DAMN YOUR POPULARITY MIKE! Who ever asked you to be so popular anyway?

Enlightenment · Post by **Enlightenment** » 2003-03-17 01:43am

Darth Wong wrote:640kbps upload. Granted, that's only a third of a T1 line, but with mod_gzip I would hope it's workable. The problem I see right now is that every server I've been using lately has been bogging down on database queries and CPU utilization, not bandwidth.

I've heard that phpBB has a bit of a reputation for being a resource hog when serving a heavy user load. If you keep on having problems with providers bogging down on CPU it might be worth doing some experiments with other board software.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-17 01:46am

Crown wrote:So far I have had more 'cannot find server' pages on this new server in a row than I did in the other one. DAMN YOUR POPULARITY MIKE! Who ever asked you to be so popular anyway?

"Cannot find server" pages? I haven't seen one yet. What URL are you using to access it, and exactly what does the error look like?

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2003-03-17 01:49am

Darth Wong wrote:
Crown wrote:So far I have had more 'cannot find server' pages on this new server in a row than I did in the other one. DAMN YOUR POPULARITY MIKE! Who ever asked you to be so popular anyway?
"Cannot find server" pages? I haven't seen one yet. What URL are you using to access it, and exactly what does the error look like?

At the start when I would click on the forum it would take for ages to load, and sometimes it would just say 'cannot find server'. Then I click refresh and all's good for a while. Though the last few clicks have been problem free I am delighted to say.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2003-03-17 01:50am

Darth Wong wrote:
Crown wrote:So far I have had more 'cannot find server' pages on this new server in a row than I did in the other one. DAMN YOUR POPULARITY MIKE! Who ever asked you to be so popular anyway?
"Cannot find server" pages? I haven't seen one yet. What URL are you using to access it, and exactly what does the error look like?

At the start when I would click on the forum it would take for ages to load, and sometimes it would just say 'cannot find server'. Then I click refresh and all's good for a while. Though the last few clicks have been problem free I am delighted to say.

Oh and the url is http://bbs2.stardestroyer.net/posting.p ... e&p=381675

It's starting again!!!!!

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-17 01:51am

Enlightenment wrote:I've heard that phpBB has a bit of a reputation for being a resource hog when serving a heavy user load. If you keep on having problems with providers bogging down on CPU it might be worth doing some experiments with other board software.

Actually, the larger problem is MySQL 3. You see, MySQL 3.23.55 does not support row-locking. As a result, it locks the entire database when it adds or alters a record. Needless to say, while this expediency is not a problem with low traffic, it does not scale well. MySQL 4 supports row-locking, but it is still officially beta and is not widely used. MySQL MAX also supports row-locking, but that is a commercial version which is not open-sourced.

PostgreSQL does not suffer from this problem (although it's quite a bit slower under light-traffic conditions), but conversion of a database from MySQL to PostgreSQL is quite difficult because of minor differences in syntax. PhpBB uses something like 18 queries for a typical operation while some other software packages use as few as 13, but that's not the sort of thing that causes these long delays; those are definitely caused by the lack of row-locking in MySQL 3.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-17 01:55am

Division of server resources is also a major culprit. On the average webhost, it takes 1 to 2 hours to restore my database. On my home PC, it takes half an hour. Why? Because I have unlimited, exclusive use of the CPU and RAM on my home PC, while I'm sharing with other users on webhosts.

Crown · Post by **Crown** » 2003-03-17 02:11am

I am getting a lot of 'This page cannot be displayed'. Or really long delays, just so you know I am on cable. Anyone else have this problem?

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-03-17 02:12am

Fuck. The performance seems to be even worse than the last host. Should I cut my losses and move back now?