Slooooowwww

[sirhc55]

Just wanted to check with other members as to how fast this site is.

I’m on cable and when I browse the web the browser shows sites almost immediately - except for this site. It really is very slow in refreshing plus I get a fair amount of errors - never used to be like this.

So how is it for everyone else

[moz]

Erratic, and it crashes fairly often (I get the server error page, but it comes back to life within a minute or so). The speed can be quite reasonable at times, but it is often slow and it's never blazingly fast. Flip side is that Dreamhost is very cheap, and I doubt Gary is making enough from the Poon deal to cover anything reliably fast (ie, expensive).

Edit:, and posting this evening has been very hard - it's both slow and crash-prone, so I'm having to hit stop then post again, sometimes more than once.

[ozczecho]

S-L-O-W and unreliable...who ever is the host should be shown the finger

[Geoff]

There certainly are some issues at the moment and Gary is very aware. He's been pretty busy of late but I know he has it listed as a priority to improve things.

[Yi-P]

It is just recent week which has this happening. I'm guessing it is the database for this forum is getting enormous and the server is having some hard time with all these data in masses. I remember there was been a crash in the database/SQL side for Dreamhost several weeks ago... not sure if it is related.

[Killakoala]

I'd hate to even try imagine how big this database is now. Ooops, just thought about it. Too late.

[Kyle]

It's usually pretty good for me, work conn doesnt like it much though, 20sec delay for most pages...

[phillipb]

Almost unbearable for me, sometimes I make a cup of coffee in between pages
I would never bother for any other site, but this is home.

[macka]

I frequently get 20-30sec loading times (I have a little fasterfox timer so this is pretty accurate) - that's when you can actually get the site to load at all, as it's becoming more common than not to get an "internal server error". The site's always going to be slow to some extent - it's a big forum. But there are much bigger forums out there that don't have all the crashes. What's with all the crashes?

[gstark]

As Geoff says, I am painfully aware of the problems.

And having followed the suggestions made by DH staff, I think it's gotten worse!

What's of interest to me is that within those suggestions they're talking about you'll only see improvements on what they call large sites. With very long threads, and lotts of members.

Now some may consider us to be big, but with the context that these threads are being discussed, we are quite small.

One thing I do not have enabled here is forum pruning - and I'm reluctant to do that. The history that we have in our posts is one of the reasons we have become a valued, and valuable, resource, and if I am not careful, we couyld lose a lot of that.

That would not be a good thing.

Where my thoughts are is that I'm thinking in terms of spltiting the site into two - a full site - which would become an archive - and a smaller one - exactly the same, but using a pruned database.

That would be the default site, and, with a much smaller database, should have better and more reliable performance.

The problem with that is keeping both sites in "sync" as it were, and I'd need to figure out a way to add new posts that have been to the main (smaller) forum into the archive. That would also need to include new memberships, group changes and additions, new references in the search tables, and so on.

And I would also need to disable all posting in the archive forum, because it would be all too easy to think you were in the live one, and make a post that not too many would see.

And then there's the issue of what do I prune? The two biggest forums are Image Review and General Discussion. Between those two forums there is maybe 60% of the posts made here.

Perhaps there might be some benefit in culling IR and seeing if we gain any benefit from that?

[tasadam]

I don't know how these things work, but perhaps a temporary cull for the purposes of testing...
It would be a shame to make such changes, or put in all that work, if it didn't fix anything...

Just a thought.

[Geoff]

Gary - please revise your last post, it was FAR too long and will cause the server issues. Consider this your last and final warning

[Kyle]

I don't feel that pruning is the answer, That merely covers up the real issue

[devilla101]

I would never bother for any other site, but this is home.

I second that

[gstark]

I don't feel that pruning is the answer, That merely covers up the real issue

Not necessarily, Kyle.

One of the issues that I'm aware of with MySQL is that for some queries, it tries to load the full data table. If I can make the data table smaller, then I am addressing that issue.

Which leads me to a thought that perhaps look something other than MySQL?

Back to looking at what DH provide.

[tasadam]

Which leads me to a thought that perhaps look something other than MySQL?

Google Desktop search is quick, perhaps MySQL should take lessons...
Really, it's incredible how search engines like google can process so much data so quickly... I know, I have been to howstuffworks.com, but it is still pretty incredible.
Hey, you google people out there, there's a challenge for you - a product to rival MySQL that works as quick as google....

[rflower]

One of the issues that I'm aware of with MySQL is that for some queries, it tries to load the full data table.

Most database products will do this. The internal query optimisers try to work out how much data the query will return. It it is greater than a set % of the total rows, it figures that a full table scan will return rows quicker than finding in the relevant index, and then finding the rows that the index relates to.

These queries should not be the norm though.

If they are, It may be, that different indexes may perform better ... There are indexes, right Gary??

Some things won't necessarily be able to use an index either, and might default to a full table scan. for example It is probably difficult to create an index looking for posts that contain word "x"

my 2c worth

Russell

[gstark]

There are indexes, right Gary??

Heaps.

[Div]

I'm on iinet with 24000k (i.e about 4 megs per second download to any fast australian server like optusnet) and even i find dslrusers slow.

[Geoff]

Interesingly I am using iinet as well with about a 10mb d/load speed and the forum is NOT slow at all at the moment for me.

[sirhc55]

Interesingly I am using iinet as well with about a 10mb d/load speed and the forum is NOT slow at all at the moment for me.

Geoff - living in the Northern burbs you are much closer to God - maybe that helps

[Matt. K]

I don't find the forum to be overly slow. It has the occasional hiccup but is normally very reliable at my end. The only issues I have are that my images at Pbase only show up erratically and I think that's a Pbase problem. Don't listen to those whingers, Gary, they're just hyperactive and have no patience!

[sirhc55]

I don't find the forum to be overly slow. It has the occasional hiccup but is normally very reliable at my end. The only issues I have are that my images at Pbase only show up erratically and I think that's a Pbase problem. Don't listen to those whingers, Gary, they're just hyperactive and have no patience!

Patience - patience - I’m so patient that I can prepare a 3 course meal, write my biography and read War and Peace waiting for the refresh

[Oz_Beachside]

performance for me has been inhibiting over the last few months.

But I dont know enough to complain, I'm just thankful that this is here.

[phillipb]

Well, I don't know what you've done Gary, but it's flying at the moment.

[sirhc55]

I agree - have fire extinguisher by monitor just in case

[Killakoala]

It is a lot better tonight though. No missed or multiple posts for me yet.

[norbs]

Have you tried the phpBB forums Gary. they have been a good source of knowledge for me.

[greencardigan]

Ocasionally I experience some slowness, but usually I have no problems.

[gstark]

Have you tried the phpBB forums Gary. they have been a good source of knowledge for me.

yep.

For performance problems, the solutions they suggest are oriented towards big sites ... we'd be classed as moderate within their terms.

My suspicion is that DH isn't really geared towards hosting dynamic sites such as ours. I think their memory limits may be unrealistically low for the types of queries we run.

[bwhinnen]

It has been pretty responsive this morning since about 5:00am that is

[sirhc55]

Gone gaa gaa again today - hangs, 404, and very slow

[fozzie]

--- ditto ---

I have experienced the same difficulty from mid afternoon today to now from work and home.

Just gone again:-

Internal Server Error
The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request.

Please contact the server administrator, webmaster@dslrusers.net and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error.

More information about this error may be available in the server error log.

Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.

fozzie

[binky]

seems to be intermittent.. works 1 min and then doesn't the next?

[Nnnnsic]

Working on it.

[Pehpsi]

The site's been working great for me the past few days, snappy as..

[iGBH]

I was thinking just this morning how quick it had been lately and then it went through a period of slowness.

It's certainly better than it was a week ago though.

[gstark]

Fridays, Sydney time, is when it seems to fall apart.

The issue is one that'[s server based - where the hosts say that we're using too many resources - and they kill some processes.

The problem with their theory is that we frequently have many more users on throughout the week - I counted about forty concurrently online on Monday) with no problems, yet on Friday it seems to barely cope with a dozen.

There's clearly - to my mind - something else happening on Fridays (our time) that the host service is in denial about. Yes, it may well be forcing us into having those processes killed, but that doesn't change the fact that there is something else that must be happenning ...

So ... today is Friday ... please be patient.