Server Busy

[Bender001]

Perhaps the administrators could keep us informed of any progress they have made, or the lack there of. That would seem like a common courtesy.

 

[gb2000ie]

Perhaps the administrators could keep us informed of any progress they have made, or the lack there of. That would seem like a common courtesy.

Agreed - the deafening silence from the owners is not helpful.

B.

 

[Voyager]

Sorry guys

Sometimes the silence is because we are not informed either and have nothing to report. While we understand the frustration from the members here, it is also frustrating for us because the forum works slowly while we are bypassing the busy server message.

I did send a second email to the forum owner 2 days ago and his technical guru was on the forum yesterday morning and posted this for us:

guys, i can fix it if i turn off database forum marking for new posts. i will set the option to use cookies for new posts. this should make the site load better. what do you think?
it might affect the way you see the new posts page

We have asked him to go ahead and do whatever is necessary as many of us do not use that method for checking posts anyway, but I suspect the problem resolution he posted is not what is causing the entire problem and asked him to keep looking to see if other solutions will help.

To my knowledge, he has not been on and not effected these changes yet.

Other than that, we have little that we can tell you.:worried:

 

[gb2000ie]

Sorry guys

Sometimes the silence is because we are not informed either and have nothing to report. While we understand the frustration from the members here, it is also frustrating for us because the forum works slowly while we are bypassing the busy server message.

I did send a second email to the forum owner 2 days ago and his technical guru was on the forum yesterday morning and posted this for us:




We have asked him to go ahead and do whatever is necessary as many of us do not use that method for checking posts anyway, but I suspect the problem resolution he posted is not what is causing the entire problem and asked him to keep looking to see if other solutions will help.

To my knowledge, he has not been on and not effected these changes yet.

Other than that, we have little that we can tell you.:worried:

That's not a fix, that's a hack!!!!

Either the database server is not tuned (quite likely as no one seems to bother with tuning these days), or it simply doesn't have enough resources.

My money is on a lack of resources, either the server has been down-graded, or it is being shared by more sites, or by other sites that have greatly increased in load. What ever the cause, disabling functionality is not the solution, it might buy a few more weeks of OK performance, but what's needed is an actual fix. Be that tuning, or more resources. I doubt this site has grown in size or use dramatically enough to cause this, so something has changed, and needs to be un-changed!

B.

 

[abruma]

My vote is for moving to another host forthwith.

 

[yoyo888]

Yer my guess it is a VIRTUAL MACHINE it is running on and not a dedicated server. So YES could certainly be sharing processor/memory etc resources of the actual server. Maybe the server its self needs a memory boost. Or maybe memory has been taken out and the hosting company was hoping we would not notice!!! That has happened in the past I know with other situations

Has the actual server got AV software. Is that what is slowing it down as it has to scan the database file every time a change is made?

Maybe a clear out of some very old posts needs to be done to make the database file smaller. October 17th 2008 is the oldest post. I really doubt people look that far back. And there is also one post dated January 1st 1970.

Now maybe that VERY old post is causing issues. I know in the past with playing with databases some entries can get corrupt and cause chaos!

Your admin guy who plays with the site. Does he have access to the WHOLE server if it is a dedicated server or just your site if it is on a shared server?

If a shared server I doubt you can see the system resources of the whole server, so what he sees in the actual site everything is fine.

If a shared server or VM one, maybe you need to find out if other new sites have been added recently as this issue only started suddenly about three weeks ago. That is something to find out from the hosting company.

Just checking the IP address and see that babeforums.org uses the same IP so on the same server. How is that site performing do you know.

My mind has gone blank now!! Gosh look at the tree outside. Autumn is coming!

 

[Brian23]

I have drastically cut what i am posting until this is fixed. It is a major bother to have to come on in the middle of the night to post, because during the day it is down!

 

[Giangiacomo]

Thanks to the administrators for their efforts and news update. It is becoming a real problem trying to connect. The server now seems to be too busy for around twelve hors a day.

 

[crazysexyboi]

I get the server busy message every single time I visit the site. I'll stay on for 5 minutes and get it, wait 10, it works, and then get the error message again - I'll be lucky to be able to get this message in before it happens again.

 

[joparoke]

I received the server busy message multiple times on Monday, Sept 5 between 1:00 PM - 10:00 PM ET and I never was able to access the site at all. Not until this morning, Tuesday Sept 6 10:40 AM.

It's frustrating when you see that you have PMs but are unable to view them.

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

That's not a fix, that's a hack!!!!

Either the database server is not tuned (quite likely as no one seems to bother with tuning these days), or it simply doesn't have enough resources.

My money is on a lack of resources, either the server has been down-graded, or it is being shared by more sites, or by other sites that have greatly increased in load. What ever the cause, disabling functionality is not the solution, it might buy a few more weeks of OK performance, but what's needed is an actual fix. Be that tuning, or more resources. I doubt this site has grown in size or use dramatically enough to cause this, so something has changed, and needs to be un-changed!

B.

Totally agree with you GB on this one, first the hack will work for a while and will keep on caching and bring back the same issue if not more issues. I do not come as often anymore to notice how often the server busy is coming, but rich of previous experiences in running forum, the issues is for the most a lack of resources and YES database tuning is an important step. Running a website that runs on database such as VBulletin or the very most private MS Office SharePoint, many things needs to be taken in consideration and the very first one is the Database tuning; scripts and sites like VBulletin doesn't just store information in database they use the transactional functions of it, which means the back-end functions of VBulletin is powered by the database. Thus, frequent maintenance should be done and I don't know if I'm wrong but I don't see too often the site being taken down for maintenance. One shouldn't attempt to optimize a database when 50 thousand users are looking at their mails , furthermore some automated cache management, frequent tables rebuilt in short a bi-weekly server optimization is strongly suggested.

Since I don't have much information on the back-end or equipments used for the hosting of GH; the only things I can provide is plausible causes of this server busy message. (Take them in consideration or not, that's the last of my worries but let's say it... been running server for more than a decade).

• VBulletin itself as a script is not very heavy, the web server should be able to take the load, and if the database is not in cause, therefore the web server is seriously overloaded and this beautiful message from VBulletin is activated by a script petitioning Apache/IIS and other web servers.
• If GH is on a cloud hosting, using virtual technology, as good as virtualization is; I really don't recommend it to run a board with more than 50k users, admin are just asking for problems. Of course this also bring me to think about the virtualization infrastructure being used if any, which I won't go there it's way too complicated. I have met some IT technicians who were running their databases on a virtual server... yes it it possible but oh my god... you better have a very good backup strategy and give a lot of resources to the databases because if there's one unpredictable server in a server farm, it will sure be the database one; MySQL, Oracle, MSSQL, IBM DB2 doesn't matter which ones.
• Databases lack of optimization and/or tuning... if MySQL is used (now any form of MySQL); frequent tables optimization should be done, in fact a very popular website should have a downtime of about two hours every two days for maintenance; rebuilt tables, empty cache, rebuilt all those VBulletin instances (i know there's at least 15 of them). Those can be set as task from VBulletin admin panel and also from Windows or Linux; every good system admin knows how to set automated tasks. And tasks can also be planned from MySQL itself.
• As the site become huge how about an additional load balancing server (and I don't mean virtual load balancing) frankly as much as I know that virtualization is a money saver I hate that crap like my aunt Gertrude (Gertrude is an ugly name :rofl. Is GH under a cluster farm? Doesn't have to be huge, cluster of two or three is quite enough.
• Last possibility is DOS attack, but now I'd say that if GH is hosted that should certainly be looked after within a shared environment. I had the pleasure of fighting a DOS attack from China, Czech and Russia last year and that wasn't funny... God thank you for Cisco Systems

Just like GB said it so well, stop looking into the script for a fix, fix the resources... I am so certain that the issue doesn't lie on script or people's Internet connections that I'd throw Blondy Locks in the fire

Okay enough techie crap enjoy your slow day hahahaha! :cheers:

 

[Shepard]

Hey guys,
i made a change to the way new posts are saved. right now they will be saved into your cookies, that will lessen the load on the server and it should work nicely. if you see any issues please contact me and i'll try to fix asap
cheers

 

[brmstn69]

Let me guess...

Oron's check bounced?

 

[yoyo888]

Is this also amending the way the THREADS are displayed. Usually they are all shown BOLD if you have not read them, and normal test when you have read them?

I see there is only about an hours history now where as it used to be a week or so

Hope that makes sense. If not I will do a screen grab

Si

 

[gb2000ie]

hey guys,
i made a change to the way new posts are saved. Right now they will be saved into your cookies, that will lessen the load on the server and it should work nicely. If you see any issues please contact me and i'll try to fix asap
cheers

this is broken - this does not work

THE SITE IS NOW UNUSABLE

this is not a fix!!!

 

[gb2000ie]

Is this also amending the way the THREADS are displayed. Usually they are all shown BOLD if you have not read them, and normal test when you have read them?

I see there is only about an hours history now where as it used to be a week or so

Hope that makes sense. If not I will do a screen grab

Si

Once your session is over, you seem to loose all history. So, in short, each day you'll be utterly and totally lost as to what has been replied to.

This is a total disaster - I can't use a site like this - no normal human can!

B.

 

[gb2000ie]

And to add insult to injury - it has not even fixed the server busy messages - so loose loose

B.

 

[ggold]

At the risk of being repetitive, none of these things are happening to me. Not even the server busy messages.

I logged off at about 1450. I logged on just now, and everything after the logoff time shows up bold, as expected. Perhaps this is a regional thing?

 

[SimplyJakeAndAlex]

At the risk of being repetitive, none of these things are happening to me. Not even the server busy messages.

I logged off at about 1450. I logged on just now, and everything after the logoff time shows up bold, as expected. Perhaps this is a regional thing?

Yeah well try to clean the cache of your browser, and you'll have a little surprise dude

 

[Shepard]

i put the database forum marking back, sorry for the problems caused