Far be it from me to complain about the SDMB server efficiency 
, but besides eliminating the RSS feeds what if you chose to shut down some of the other “features”? Doing away with private messaging, editing posts, use of smilies, search functions, starting a new thread, posting to a thread, reading a thread, typing in text, logging in, etc would probably increase speed wouldn’t it?
I imagine the only essential “feature” that must be left in place would be the annual subscription fee.
Yeah, Jerry I’m being incredibly sarcastic but I’m not faulting you. It just seems that no matter what the Straight Dope, the Chicago Reader, God Almighty or even Cecil decides to do about the operation of this message board, the net result is usually frustration, aggravation, tedium, etc.
Think that might be fixed in 3.6.4? I’ve had no problems with RSS feeds on my site, but then again I’ve got less traffic of the SDMB.
EDIT: What kernel is the new server running?
Also, the pruning could have actually slowed down the SDMB! Well, at least according to what’s being reported in this thread:
http://www.vbulletin.com/forum/showthread.php?t=111239
From one of the posts:
Seems fast at 0128 EST. I got a few timeout earlier. I guess things are fixed(or everyone is asleep or surfing pr0n).
I read that post on the vBulletin site the other day, elmwood.
One step at a time…
We run FreeBSD.
Just to satisfy my curiosity, since I’m stuck on a VPS with a CentOS kernel - what are the advantages of a Web server running FreeBSD over your typical run-of-the-mill distro?
BTW, things seem fine over here; the SDMB loads quickly.
I’ve used versions of BSDes since 1985 so I have a bit more familiarity with them than the various linuxes. I also like the FreeBSD minimal server install as opposed to what at least I thought was an “everything including the kitchen sink” installs I was getting when I was using Red Hat for a time. Mostly it’s just personal preference and the desire to continue using one OS since almost all of the Unix servers I’ve built are running FreeBSD.
Jerry, you’re doing something that benefits us all.
Please imagine a stadium filled with SDMB subscribers all chanting “Jerry! Jerry!”
Rather like Saruman addressing a horde of Uruk-Hai, if you see what I mean…
I do see what you mean and hopefully Wormtongue isn’t in the audience…
I would recommend checking what the lock settings are for the database. Does an insert lock the whole table? Just a column? Etc.
MySQL defaults to table locking, which is good for mostly-read-only databases, but sucks for high-speed insertion and would come out like what we’re experiencing. Dunno what database system you all are using, but I would suspect that there are a couple of settings.
FreeBSD is a different kernel than Linux. But from a user standpoint there really shouldn’t be any practical difference except for how packages are distributed, configured, and installed. I believe all the basic stuff is still all GNU, X Windows, Ext-3, etc. (though I’m not sure of that.)
MyISAM table-types use table level locking and vBulletin is designed around the assumption a site is using MySQL/MyISAM as the database/table-type. We use MySQL/MyISAM.
I’ve heard of at least one vBulletin site switching to MySQL InnoDB table-types in order to get row level locking but then switching back to MyISAM because they found InnoDB has it’s own negatives. As you said, table level locking can suck at times for high-speed multi-user record insertion/update environments.
For what it may be worth, everything for me is much better today. I read a lot and post often, and I had some terrible slowdowns and timeouts before today. But so far today, none at all.
Oopsie. Okay. One.
Nothing today for me, which is a definite improvement over yesterday. Frustration ruled then.
Of course, I’ve been spending a lot of time over at ParadoxPlaza, since Europa Universalis III came out today!!
So I haven’t been as active here…
Why use vBulletin/MySQL/MyISAM knowing it has such a significant problem? Surely there is a software/db combo without such a significant problem.
It has degraded considerably over the course of the late afternoon.
Not for me; it’s still as fast as ever. I had a brief slowdown earlier, but that was the extent of it.
There may in fact be. At the time the move from UBB to vBulletin was actually a vast improvement over how UBB was functioning. We would not have grown into a site with this problem if vBulletin was a bad system from the start. I’m not even saying vBulletin is a bad system now, it just has some deficiencies. Those deficiencies revealed themselves slowly over time as we created a larger and then larger still database.
One major issue to be considered is how do you convert 6.7M posts, 315K threads, and 63K users from their current vBulletin representation into the new software/db combo representation? If you know of a system that can do that I’d be interested in hearing about it.