Whassup?

General site news. Details of forthcoming outages and so on.
User avatar
Minnie the Minx
funky thigh collector
Posts: 33546
Joined: 29 Dec 2006, 16:00
Location: In the naughty North and in the sexy South

Whassup?

Postby Minnie the Minx » 09 Jul 2010, 07:57

Looking at the boards takes the same time, but if I search anything or go to my PMs it takes about two minutes (!) to load.

Any clues?
You come at the Queen, you best not miss.

Dr Markus wrote:
Someone in your line of work usually as their own man cave aka the shed we're they can potter around fixing stuff or something don't they?


Flower wrote:I just did a google search.

User avatar
JQW
Posts: 29052
Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 13:27
Location: The Crazy Loquat, Szegerely

Re: Whassup?

Postby JQW » 09 Jul 2010, 11:33

It looks like the server move has impacted performance somewhat, particularly when posting. I'll have a play around, disabling minor features and the like until the site stabilises.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell

User avatar
the masked man
Schadenfreude
Posts: 27074
Joined: 21 Jul 2003, 12:29
Location: Peterborough

Re: Whassup?

Postby the masked man » 03 Aug 2010, 21:39

I'm also finding board performance is, intermittently, very slow indeed, particularly when accessing an index. Zlib Compression hasn't been disabled again, has it? ;)

User avatar
JQW
Posts: 29052
Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 13:27
Location: The Crazy Loquat, Szegerely

Re: Whassup?

Postby JQW » 03 Aug 2010, 22:12

There does seem to be another problem. As yet I've not managed to isolate the cause, mainly due to not being able to physically access the server from here. I'll keep trying.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell

User avatar
JQW
Posts: 29052
Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 13:27
Location: The Crazy Loquat, Szegerely

Re: Whassup?

Postby JQW » 03 Aug 2010, 22:53

I've identified a couple of causes of these problems:

1. Deleting a post from a thread, when it's the last post in that thread. The code that does this seems to be fairly inefficient.

2. Viewing all posts from any particular user causes severe performance degradation, as it runs a fairly complicated query which can fetch a lot of records.

I believe that there's some tweaks I can make to change how these queries work, as they appear to be a common problem. I'll look into it further tomorrow.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell

User avatar
jude
Turkey Boy (and destroyer of Spam Filters)
Posts: 11396
Joined: 14 Nov 2003, 17:27
Location: Near Bradford's surrounding areas which encompass the city of Bradford (A small village near Leeds)
Contact:

Re: Whassup?

Postby jude » 03 Aug 2010, 23:06

JQW wrote:2. Viewing all posts from any particular user causes severe performance degradation, as it runs a fairly complicated query which can fetch a lot of records.
I did that earlier and it took yonks.

I haven't got anything valuable to contribute (as always), just thought i'd tell you something you already know. :?
Betty Denim wrote:And, quite frankly, if I had been raped and you said to me 'well yeah, it's crap innit; it's like that time I had to have a turnip curry' I'd do more than insult you.

User avatar
the masked man
Schadenfreude
Posts: 27074
Joined: 21 Jul 2003, 12:29
Location: Peterborough

Re: Whassup?

Postby the masked man » 03 Aug 2010, 23:09

Thanks, Paul, as ever.

User avatar
atomic loonybin
ready for the house
Posts: 15326
Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 20:09

Re: Whassup?

Postby atomic loonybin » 04 Aug 2010, 13:53

JQW wrote:1. Deleting a post from a thread, when it's the last post in that thread. The code that does this seems to be fairly inefficient.


I'm afraid I'm guilty of this. You can only delete a post when it is the last in a thread of course. But I do tend to delete my 'threadkiller' posts when no-one has bothered replying or whatever after a few days or having thought better of the post. I deleted a thread that I started last week because no-one replied. What's the point of having them hanging around?

Anyway, when you delete a 'last post' you get the message up saying 'Sure you want to delete?'. Pressing the yes seems to cause nothing to happen. The progress bar at the bottom very slowly moves, but just seems to completely hang. If you press the yes again, you might - certainly used to - get the 'post does not exist' message, but since the upgrade, again nothing seems to happen. If you just kill it, the post has gone anyway. So it seems to be caused by the refresh of the thread after the post has been deleted.

User avatar
JQW
Posts: 29052
Joined: 16 Jul 2003, 13:27
Location: The Crazy Loquat, Szegerely

Re: Whassup?

Postby JQW » 04 Aug 2010, 14:07

When you delete the post something does happen. The database that sits behind the webserver does two things. First it deletes the actual post, which takes very little time. Then it updates the timestamp and other details of the last post in that thread (and section if necessary), and it's the effort involved in tracking down the relevant post that causes the server to appear go away. Sometimes this digging around can take well over a minute.

Owners of other phpBB sites have seen the same problem, and have suggested some fixes. I'll get one of those in place soon.
The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt. - Bertrand Russell


Return to “Site News”