Site is back, after Monday 1st June disruption

[John V]

Have only just come on line a bit ago, I haven't noticed anything particular apart fro a couple of hesitations when loading "view new posts" certainly didn't notice any problems posting (although my typing is painfully slow ) John

 

PS a big Thanks from me too !!!

[Suzie_q]

I am finding the forum virtually unusable this morning. Even just getting a reply window to open or making a post is taking an age or just doesn't happen at all.

 

Anybody else experiencing this?

 

No problems here

[DHutch]

I am finding the forum virtually unusable this morning. Even just getting a reply window to open or making a post is taking an age or just doesn't happen at all.

No problems here

This is the other thing thats really quite odd about this. Not only does it vary over time, it appears to vary user to user.

 

 

Daniel

[Mutts]

 

I am finding the forum virtually unusable this morning. Even just getting a reply window to open or making a post is taking an age or just doesn't happen at all.

 

Anybody else experiencing this?

I would bother.....but I can't

[Suzie_q]

This is the other thing thats really quite odd about this. Not only does it vary over time, it appears to vary user to user.

 

 

Daniel

I will say that my internet is not running that fast this morning as some sites are taking a while to load, but this one appears ok.

[MtB]

I am finding the forum virtually unusable this morning. Even just getting a reply window to open or making a post is taking an age or just doesn't happen at all.

 

Anybody else experiencing this?

 

 

Yes, intermittently.

 

Sometimes posts refuse to send, but come back after five mins and all is fine.

 

Interestingly, opening a fresh tab in FF and selecting VNC seems to prompt a stuck post to connecting and sending itself at the same time VNC displays in the new tab (usually after just a short delay.)

(Had to do just this in order to get this post posted!)

[John V]

1224 to 1228 loading one post (very short one at that) John

 

this one loaded instantly .......incidentally why am I on a different time zone to the site ? John

Edited June 5, 2015 by John V

[Paul C]

Its once again being looked at by the hosting company. I see slowness, but then I am seeing clocking on all other websites and apps on my laptop. I keep meaning to reboot it and see if it improves, I think its been about a month since I last did a reboot.....

 

There's another incremental change going to be applied 2pm today, this one won't need the site down or anything though.

[Paul C]

 

MySQL should be able to handle that in its sleep.

 

myISAM or innodb (or something else)

 

MySQL performance can be dramatically altered by some tweaking of buffers

 

For reference, these are what we have set on a SERIOUSLY big database using myISAM

 

key_buffer_size=1024M

table_cache=1024

sort_buffer_size=256M

read_buffer_size=64M

query_cache_size=16M

read_rnd_buffer_size=64M

thread_cache_size=60

tmp_table_size=1024M

myisam_sort_buffer_size=256M

myisam_max_sort_file_size=65536M

 

Thanks for the info. All the tables are MyISAM which is what IP.Board uses by default. Having looked and compared the values they're much smaller on our server but if yours is a larger one anyway, not sure if they're directly comparable.

[mayalld]

 

Thanks for the info. All the tables are MyISAM which is what IP.Board uses by default. Having looked and compared the values they're much smaller on our server but if yours is a larger one anyway, not sure if they're directly comparable.

 

Key Buffer usually has the most dramatic effect

[Paul C]

 

Key Buffer usually has the most dramatic effect

 

Yeah ours is 256M. TBH the MySQL server configuration is something the webhosting company would normally configure, I don't even have acces to it via WHM, I could in theory get to (edit) the file using Telnet though.

[Paul C]

We're still waiting to hear fully from the hosting company what caused the previous Sunday's outage, although I have a fair idea. This Sunday's outage is also going to be closely looked into although I fear its a reoccurence of the same thing. Also currently I have drawn a blank with finding out what causes the site responsiveness issue, although the hosting firm now accept that it occurs.

[MtB]

Bear in mind the slow response problem existed before the host change, a year or two ago, and before the version upgrade too, IIRC.

 

Seems as likely to me to be an InVision problem than a host problem...

[DHutch]

Are you talking about the general response time, responsiveness (circa 4000ms page load times) , or the intermittent 25-40sec hanging that occurs on top of that?

 

Daniel

Bear in mind the slow response problem existed before the host change, a year or two ago, and before the version upgrade too, IIRC.

 

[MtB]

The one and two minute hangings, particularly on VNC. These first cropped up for me before the host change but were not widely recognised in discussions about it, being mixed up with slow response times generally. The host change was supposed to fix it but made no difference for me.

 

Then the version upgrade was forced on us by the new host as the solution to the same problem(s) IIRC. Made no difference for me, but the delays died down to none a few months ago. Then they returned culminating in these two outages. I suspect the outages are a new, separate issue though.

[Paul C]

I think the "view new content" hang is actually something which can occur on any page, not just view new content, but because VNC is a popular page to visit its why its reported here. Also its one of the more complex in terms of database access etc.

[Guest]

I think the "view new content" hang is actually something which can occur on any page, not just view new content, but because VNC is a popular page to visit its why its reported here. Also its one of the more complex in terms of database access etc.

 

I generally get these 'hangs' on anything that involves any sort of search function. VNC is the worst but if I am say for example clicking on 'my content' to find a post I have made previously I get similar, though not as bad.

[nicknorman]

I'm finding VNC pretty quick at the moment, under 2 seconds. So that surely means there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the concept, but rather at times something is blocking / slowing it.

 

Edit: and that post took about 2 seconds to post and come back with the new post showing

Edited June 8, 2015 by nicknorman

[Grebe]

I use a bog-standard 8 year old laptop with Vista Basic and Firefox. Never had any delays/hang-ups with VNC, which is my 'go to' default when selecting Canal World.

[Paul C]

I'm finding VNC pretty quick at the moment, under 2 seconds. So that surely means there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the concept, but rather at times something is blocking / slowing it.

 

Edit: and that post took about 2 seconds to post and come back with the new post showing

 

There's 2 issues, which are similar but not the same. One is that the site is (was) generally slowish. This seems to have improved recently. The other issue is that on 4% of occasions it hangs for a really long time, like 20-40secs. It rarely 'crashes' as in delivers an error page or none at all (except during the serious outages) but just takes that length of time to deliver the page.

 

I use a bog-standard 8 year old laptop with Vista Basic and Firefox. Never had any delays/hang-ups with VNC, which is my 'go to' default when selecting Canal World.

 

Since it happens in approx 4% of cases, so its entirely possible that light users of the forum won't see any hangs at all.

[nicknorman]

There's 2 issues, which are similar but not the same. One is that the site is (was) generally slowish. This seems to have improved recently. The other issue is that on 4% of occasions it hangs for a really long time, like 20-40secs. It rarely 'crashes' as in delivers an error page or none at all (except during the serious outages) but just takes that length of time to deliver the page.

 

Since it happens in approx 4% of cases, so its entirely possible that light users of the forum won't see any hangs at all.

However, at least superficially, it doesn't seem like a random 4% of cases. Sometimes, like at the moment, every VNC is delivered swiftly and the forum is generally responsive. Whereas at other times (and I'd say most of the time recently) every VNC is delivered slowly, posts are slow to be made and the newly posted message displayed, despite being on a fast internet connection. Edited June 8, 2015 by nicknorman

[DHutch]

However, at least superficially, it doesn't seem like a random 4% of cases. Sometimes, like at the moment, every VNC is delivered swiftly and the forum is generally responsive. Whereas at other times (and I'd say most of the time recently) every VNC is delivered slowly, posts are slow to be made and the newly posted message displayed, despite being on a fast internet connection.

Indeed, I also notice (maybe others do?) that typical the first time I hit ViewNC for a while, it get the hang almost always, but if I hit again a few minutes later I do not, although I do then sometimes see it 'mid session' as well. It also see it elsewhere, posting replies and PMs as well as ocationally on a random thread.

 

Daniel

[MtB]

I'm also finding "Post" an answer in a thread hangs for up to a minute or so, while the rest of the site works fine (including VNC).

[larkshall]

I too am finding the post function always seems to stall go a couple of second before it actually performs the function