[Just Jen]

It's been running slow all AM, and I've been getting a MySQL error (too many connections). Now, it won't load at all. Any ideas?

[Just Jen]

Disregard the message, just saw that there is a known issue.

[Just Jen]

I spoke too soon.  This is not related to a "known issue".  It would appear that my forum has been suspended, but I don't know why.  

http://themamas.myfineforum.org/index.php

Upon clicking on the link, it redirects to a page detailing the terms and conditions of service.  At the bottom of that page, "Forum suspended, ask why on the support forum".

Please help.

[admin (no pm's please)]

as I just emailed:

[admin (no pm's please)]

I have replace the "suspended" message with something more accurate.

[Just Jen]

thank you.

will be anxiously awaiting your assistance.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Please be patient.

In a sense this may be bleeding edge stuff as there can be very few phpbb3 forums of this size ANYWHERE.


But then we have not seen issues before today, so something has happened.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I have been reviewing how to process this, and checking out some things.

There is a marginally suspiciously large sessions table, but it is not in need of repair and is not so large that it makes sense as an explanation.

The last thing we want to do here is to throw everything at the issue at once and "solve" it without having a good idea what has been going on. I know it is a pain for you and your members but it makes sense to take this one slow.

[Bravo]

JustJen, I know you must be feeling frustrated right now.  I don't know how well you know Admin, but if you know him half as well as the 'vets' on here, you'll know to trust him 100%

He'll get it sorted, if he can't there aint many who can.  Hang in there  

[admin (no pm's please)]

I have placed the site back online with some debugging code in place for if (and when) this happen again.

The reason for taking time time over this one has unfortunately happened anyway. e.g. my worry was that I'd make the problem go away and not know why, the problem went away before any changes took place

I have created some debugging code that I am running to monitor the load time on this file for this forum.

There is a suspicion that the forum is so busy that a lock situation can somehow develop. Possibly due to the sessions table being thrashed to death.

I have been looking into this sort of thing recently on phpbb2.

http://forum.myfreeforum.org/viewblogtopic.php?t=17707

If so the cure is probably easy, a change in storage engine type for the sessions table.

Please warn your members though that if they start experiencing slowness on the site, not to hit F5 to reload the page, as it is this that accelerates problems. Tell them to make a coffee instead and let us do our work. If they don't then I will simply have to suspend again which probably will stop me getting to the bottom of this.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I have placed the site back online with some debugging code in place for if (and when) this happen again.

The reason for taking time time over this one has unfortunately happened anyway. e.g. my worry was that I'd make the problem go away and not know why, the problem went away before any changes took place

I have created some debugging code that I am running to monitor the load time on this file for this forum.

There is a suspicion that the forum is so busy that a lock situation can somehow develop. Possibly due to the sessions table being thrashed to death.

I have been looking into this sort of thing recently on phpbb2.

http://forum.myfreeforum.org/viewblogtopic.php?t=17707

If so the cure is probably easy, a change in storage engine type for the sessions table.

Please warn your members though that if they start experiencing slowness on the site, not to hit F5 to reload the page, as it is this that accelerates problems. Tell them to make a coffee instead and let us do our work. If they don't then I will simply have to suspend again which probably will stop me getting to the bottom of this.

[admin (no pm's please)]

I'll also point out that the forum is large to the point of being bleeding edge for phpbb3, you will see plenty of post on the main phpbb3 support forums about people struggling to configure their forums to survive at this sort of size.

I point out to anyone (including myself on my downsizer forum) with forums of over 500,000 posts that at above that sort of level you can expect to see speed issues almost regardless of the hardware the forum is on, and really what are people trying to prove anyway? Everyone knows you have a successful forum and it will probably be more successful if pruned back to 400,000 of the most useful posts  

Can I ask if your "load settings" in the admin panel offer any concessions to how busy the forum is?

[admin (no pm's please)]

I'll also point out that the forum is large to the point of being bleeding edge for phpbb3, you will see plenty of post on the main phpbb3 support forums about people struggling to configure their forums to survive at this sort of size.

I point out to anyone (including myself on my downsizer forum) with forums of over 500,000 posts that at above that sort of level you can expect to see speed issues almost regardless of the hardware the forum is on, and really what are people trying to prove anyway? Everyone knows you have a successful forum and it will probably be more successful if pruned back to 400,000 of the most useful posts  

Can I ask if your "load settings" in the admin panel offer any concessions to how busy the forum is?

[admin (no pm's please)]

I have taken the liberty of logging in as you and reviewing load settings. There is nothing obvious out the ordinary, but you are clearly very very busy  

[Just Jen]

If I need to turn the pruners on, I will. I didn't initially because I didn't really think we'd get so huge and stay so huge.

I appreciate the hard work you put into this. All our members thank you and I'll be sure to post about the reloading of the page.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Still clear.

Pruning will effect general speed of posting and operations that are about topics. I'd like you to keep us informed on performance level in this area.

As I said already though, this issue is not "size" related. It may be busy related, but getting style information has nothing to do with the numbers of posts and your membership is hardly in extreme numbers.

Something went "rogue", but as of when I started writing this post there is not a trace of an issue (I just recorded getting your style data as taking 1/50th of a second) even if that was slow, it should not have been dead and never returning hence causing the problems we saw. It may be a phpbb3 bug  

So the current state of affairs is to continue monitoring, to try and gather information if it starts to recur, to temporarily offline the site if it gets too bad, and this time round if it does to get you back on almost immediately to see if all it needs is a short offline blip to clear things.

[admin (no pm's please)]

We are still loading your styles in 1/50th of a second and the "rogue" link which must be being called many time a second across all forums simply is not showing up at all in the snapshots I look at e.g. such calls are too quick to get a look in.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Just had a load time of .25 of a second, but then it went back to closer to 1/100th of a second. As we get into the busiest time of day over the next few hours then that is only to be expected. There is still nothing rogue showing at all.

[Just Jen]

Do we still have blocked IP's? I've had a few people contact me that still can't get on.

[admin (no pm's please)]

74.63.217.34 WAS still on the list.

[Just Jen]

Can you check

98.110.251.148

[admin (no pm's please)]

No sign of that one.

[Just Jen]

How about this one?

99.22.7.112

They are both getting "server timed out" messages, both have cleared their cache. They are currently using proxy servers to view the site, and it's working.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Apologies I was looking at the wrong server. Both those ips and others are listed. Will sort.

[Just Jen]

Awesome, thanks so much!

[admin (no pm's please)]

For the record (and sods law will probably kick in, in the next 5 minutes and prove me wrong) I am currently of the view that this was all related to the ioncube/eacclerator problems we saw yesterday on the server. It seems unlikely that two chronic issues would occur simultaneously and both be unrelated AND go away without trace. Maybe the one problem left your site with a broken cache that needed time to clear.

[admin (no pm's please)]

Having navigated around your site a few times today, I have to say that it seems blazingly fast for a forum that size to me

[bazfalty]

http://onlyoldskool.myfastforum.org

I'm getting the sql error too its been like it for an hour now.  any ideas.