I had cut down the system default to 0 but then we started having problems and the techs bumped it back up.
I hesitate to try sliding it back down again in light of the current problems.
And I do apologize, it’s frustrating to everyone.
As we are coming up on Christmas and people get days off and take vacations and whatnot I am pretty sure we’re just going to have to batch it for bit here. This is an old install of vB and we’ve beaten it like a rented mule over these years so I guess it shouldn’t be a surprise. I would look forward to some fixes and I know you do too. Maybe Santa has something for us, we’ve been good little boys and girls, no? Ho-Ho-Ho!
In the meantime, what’s it gonna be, eggnog or champagne punch? Maybe both. Wishing you Happier Holidays.
Jenny
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Because booze heals.
I was on a sports site and I could tell if the team won or lost by the state of the message board. When the team won , no problems. After a loss, the board crashed every time since fans were mad.
Probably not. Assuming VB uses a B-Tree kind of indexing, doubling the database size results in only one additional search call on average to find something specific. Not a significant load.
I doubt it’s a problem of database size. If it were, the boards would have slowed down gradually over the years, rather than suddenly become unusable. Also, it would be a problem for all users.
One odd thing is that this problem doesn’t affect everyone. I joined this thread ten days ago when I was having timeouts. Since then, I’ve had the problem only a couple of times, and only briefly. Yet other users have the problem consistently, and over many days.
I think we need more info on the users who are seeing timeouts. Answers to these questions might help:
What OS and browser(s) are you using?
What firewall do you use?
What virus protection do you use?
Who is your ISP?
Are you using a VPN?
What is your location?
My answers:
What OS and browser(s) are you using?
Windows 10 Pro
Chrome Version 79.0.3945.88 (Official Build) (64-bit)
What firewall do you use?
Windows firewall
What virus protection do you use?
Bitdefender Antivirus Plus 2020
AFAICT, the problem is extremely intermittent and usually short-lived. I had a 504 Gateway timeout a few seconds ago, and now things are back to normal. This makes this kind of problem admittedly hard to analyze.
It does not SEEM to be related either to location or client configuration, though obviously I can’t be sure. I have the impression that it tends to happen more often late at night, but whether it really does or not happen more often, it definitely happens, which argues against system load being the issue. The slowdowns and the various errors being reported are probably all the same thing – that is, if the lack of response is sufficiently long, things time out and you get the message, otherwise you sit there waiting for a while and you eventually get a response.
Also interesting is that postings don’t seem to have a problem getting through, only responses. That’s why we have so many double posts when the problem is happening fairly frequently. Posters submit a post, get no response, and assume that it hasn’t gone through, but it has. It’s the response (the confirmation of the post) that has failed to come back.
Whether this is the exact same problem that has been plaguing the site for months now I obviously can’t be sure, but all the symptoms are exactly the same.
I still wonder whether one or more disgruntled former users are launching random denial of service attacks. Those who may think this is a fun form of entertainment will note that denial of service attacks are a criminal offense under federal law.
I get roughly five minutes of Dope time and then the board stalls out. This has happened about nine times today (also yesterday) and it’s really pissing me off.
It could be the database hit a size that is causing problems rather than a gradual problem getting worse. I’ve seen that kind of problem.
on linux systems there are various freeware programs that can run to show all kinds of stats about performance to help fix problems. I can’t recall the name of the main one but when I do I will post it . Of course if it is not linux then that won’t help.
I’ve been on some message boards that have started to experience crashes - not timeouts but actual crashes that last a day or so. In more than one instance, the board gradually went downhill, until it just disappeared one day, presumably because they just didn’t register.
Ho-Ho-Ho!