Slow...

Shaam · Post by **Shaam** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 3:31 pm

Errrrr......Is anyone else having a problem with the site loading slow? This started yesterday for me. After I click on something...there is a long pause before it comes up.:|

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:39 pm

Just as well you mentioned - I found a non-essential process which was reporting as using 100% of the server CPU, and have now switched that off. Was just a web system I was playing with, but with processor utilisation like that there's no chance i'll be using it

If you're still experiencing a slow connection, do let me know, thanks.

Shaam · Post by **Shaam** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 8:32 pm

It's still slow.

I was just surprised, because usually it is instant response.

The Cove · Post by **The Cove** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 9:27 pm

Also am having very slow page movement.

xcb · Post by **xcb** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 9:35 pm

It's still quite slow here as well, but I was weened on a 2400 baud modem, so I can be patient.

Shaam · Post by **Shaam** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 10:53 pm

In the shamanism section, I put in a new topic and that subject title won't hold...just like the ones yesterday.....so a nice Admin needs to fix it.....lol.

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:08 pm

Hmm, I've had a poke around and I think it might be worth installing a PHP accelerator, there's nothing else on the system consuming those sorts of resources, and we're getting a clear 100MBit both directions...

Not really an opportune time for me at this precise moment, I'm at work and only logged on to grab an email I sent myself earlier, but I'll get onto that as soon as I can

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:01 pm

Actually, it's occurred to me that I adjusted a setting which could affect performance.

The setting is to do with unread posts, specifically how long it should take between refreshing your unread posts list.

I saw the setting for it and remembered Kath saying about the unread topics list disappearing after too short a time, so I increased the timeout from 5 minutes to 2 hours. Bit of an extreme change, I know

I will try lowering this to something like 30 minutes and see if that helps. I will also install a php accelerator, most likely some time this evening, which should result in an overall performance increase

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 3:33 pm

Lol, actually I found the time to install a php accelerator on my semi-imaginary lunchbreak

It will take a couple of hours before things are properly cached etc, but we should see a reasonably good performance increase from it.

Once more, let me know

Shaam · Post by **Shaam** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 5:33 pm

Nothing yet...but maybe you just installed it.

FraterShadowcaster · Post by **FraterShadowcaster** » Tue Aug 18, 2009 11:37 pm

I've been experiencing the same trouble with the site being slow.

Nahemah · Post by **Nahemah** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 7:09 am

"Warning: imap_fetch_overview(): supplied argument is not a valid imap resource in /home/oforg/public_html/modules/mod_email/mod_email.php on line 9

Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /home/oforg/public_html/modules/mod_email/mod_email.php on line 11
emails 0 new"

This is across rhe top of my page and the forum is slow for me too.

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 11:35 am

I think I'll have to adjust that "recent messages" timeout some more, and possibly adjust the database server cache size.

I can see from the SiteSpeed plugin I've dropped into the site that pages are taking about 1-3 seconds to download, so the slowness must be in the server building the page prior to download.

That error you're mentioning means that the site didn't set up your email account correctly, I'll configure that one for you, and the error should disappear.

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 12:17 pm

Your email problem should be fixed now.

Narrowing it down, it seems to be a bloated SQL query somewhere in the forum code. I'm looking into possible solutions, and will let you guys know once we make some progress (although, you'll probably notice).

I would also like to apologise for the service interruptions caused by this, it means repeatedly restarting the web server and database server software, which may cause temporary service loss.

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Wed Aug 19, 2009 8:27 pm

Ok, I've got a degree of logging on the time it's taking for php to build the pages, and which page was being requested at the time, which should help narrow the problem down. Already I can see some spikes of 8 to 10 seconds, but I'll need to gather some more data to see if there's a pattern. Most requests take an average of 2 seconds to build so far, but again there's not really a sufficient amount of data to look at yet.

Download times for the pages seem to be within reason, there is now a link at the bottom of the site template which provides more information about page download times.

Updates as they happen ^_^

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 7:56 am

Ok, preliminary findings from the log analysis indicate that the problem is largely on the page /forum (the main forum index), which has execution times around 9 seconds, while the majority of the rest of the site takes 1 or 2 seconds to generate.

Obviously this is a big issue, as /forum is the most-viewed URL on the site, accounting for around 30% of our traffic, and it looks pretty bad if our most-viewed page takes 9 seconds to load.

I am attempting to contact the software developer to see if this is a known problem, and if there is a known workaround. I suspect that I might be spending the weekend re-writing the code that builds the main forum page; worst-case scenario.

Can you guys confirm if this is the behavior you are experiencing? http://www.occultforum.org/forum takes about 10 seconds, while the rest of the site is pretty much within reason (read threads, using email/wiki)? Are there any other pages which are consistently loading slowly?

We aim to have this issue resolved as quickly as possible, and will keep you up-to-date on our progress.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:17 am

I have been able to ascertain that the problem seems to be with the /forum page when viewed in "Forum layout", and that by switching to topic view with the appropriate button will make the site render much much faster.

The topic view is not particularly suitable for anything other than keeping up to date with current activity on the site, however it is the only workaround for the problem which has presented itself as yet, and the option is there if you wish to take it.

I'm currently looking to get a hold of the developers who made the forum system, and will continue updating as progress is made.

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 1:24 pm

Another update: we have successfully tracked the problem down to 2 sql queries which have excessively high execution times, one adds 4 seconds to the page load, the other adds another 3.

Now looking to see if it is possible to streamline these queries.

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 2:35 pm

One of the queries is now optimised, which has shaved 3 seconds off the page build time.

It's still higher than we'd like, but it's half the battle.

I'm working on it

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 8:59 pm

Still working on the second bloated query. Tried one method of constructing the object for the page, but it made the page return a statement saying there were no boards on the forum :X

I've come up with a second way to do it, but it's going to take a little while to program it, I will update you guys as it happens.

Vashta · Post by **Vashta** » Thu Aug 20, 2009 11:19 pm

Ok, this seems to be resolved. Phew.

Page compile times and download rates seem to be back to normal, if not slightly faster lol.

I'll keep an eye on it to make sure it's working, and please post here with performance reports ^_^

Thank you