The forums are ridiculously slow right now

erisian pope

And I know this is not just me, as Callius and Shokkur (Fallout) have both mentioned it recently.

This is just an FYI.

If there's already a thread, I apologize. I looked and didn't see one.

MulysaSempronius

yeah. not sure if the problem is known, and/or if there's anything anybody can do. but it's hard to access anything right now.

Garlic Bread

They're not slow right now for me, but wouldn't load at all for like four hours.

A duck!

I'll bet good money it's those foul DoS bastards known as "Google."

erisian pope

A duck! wrote:

I'll bet good money it's those foul DoS bastards known as "Google."

I HATES THEM, I DO!

Actually, it is faster right now.

Obbi

Keith and I shared a common problem.

A duck!

Obbi wrote:

Keith and I shared a common problem.

Chlamydia?

Bergy

It was slow for me at 2-3 last night.

Xanathus

Yeah I couldn't even access it for a good hour.
I actually had to surf elsewhere :O

Obbi

A duck! wrote:

Obbi wrote:

Keith and I shared a common problem.

Chlamydia?

That's a wussy STD.

A duck!

Obbi wrote:

A duck! wrote:

Obbi wrote:

Keith and I shared a common problem.

Chlamydia?

That's a wussy STD.

Well, you used the past tense, so it would have to be.

Dog

They need to make a "Yes, we know the forums are slow" sticky thread to eliminate threads like this one.

Bottom line is, until Mike and Jerry decide to go with different hosting, the forums are always gonna be slow. HomeLAN has proven time and again they cannot consistently handle the load that Penny Arcade brings. With HomeLAN being free for M & J, I cannot forsee a hosting change anytime in the near future, so, please, spare us the "the forums are slow" threads. We already know.

erisian pope

SeñorAmor wrote:

They need to make a "Yes, we know the forums are slow" sticky thread to eliminate threads like this one.

Bottom line is, until Mike and Jerry decide to go with different hosting, the forums are always gonna be slow. HomeLAN has proven time and again they cannot consistently handle the load that Penny Arcade brings. With HomeLAN being free for M & J, I cannot forsee a hosting change anytime in the near future, so, please, spare us the "the forums are slow" threads. We already know.

You say you already know (even though this was meant for admins) but I want to point out that it is not uncommon for Alpha to mention killing an IP that was session-flooding the forums. Somtimes slowdowns occur for correctable reasons. If noone with the ability to check for and rectify similar situations is actively browsing the forums, then perhaps a thread in the forum whose purpose includes pointing things out to the mods and admins might catch their attention.

I see nothing wrong with this thread other than it seems to have annoyed you even though you could simply not read it. The title of the thread was clear enough to inform you as to the nature of the content.

Älphämönkëy

erisian pope wrote:

SeñorAmor wrote:

They need to make a "Yes, we know the forums are slow" sticky thread to eliminate threads like this one.

Bottom line is, until Mike and Jerry decide to go with different hosting, the forums are always gonna be slow. HomeLAN has proven time and again they cannot consistently handle the load that Penny Arcade brings. With HomeLAN being free for M & J, I cannot forsee a hosting change anytime in the near future, so, please, spare us the "the forums are slow" threads. We already know.

You say you already know (even though this was meant for admins) but I want to point out that it is not uncommon for Alpha to mention killing an IP that was session-flooding the forums. Somtimes slowdowns occur for correctable reasons. If noone with the ability to check for and rectify similar situations is actively browsing the forums, then perhaps a thread in the forum whose purpose includes pointing things out to the mods and admins might catch their attention.

I see nothing wrong with this thread other than it seems to have annoyed you even though you could simply not read it. The title of the thread was clear enough to inform you as to the nature of the content.

Session flodding is pretty rare, and the error (generally) is displayed like this

phpBB Error :: Could not create new session

Session table is full

. The concept behind session flooding could be used to slow down the forums (DoS\DDoS), but it would be unlikely. At the bottom of the page (displayed only to admins) is a little counter it looks like this :

(PHP: 0.2862s - SQL: 0.0222s) - SQL queries: 10 - GZIP enabled

. There are two ways that the forum slows down. The first, (and most common) some query hangs in MySQL and that .0222s shoots up to 20-30sec. This can be fixed by me patching MySQL and redoing some my.cnf variables.
The second set common type of slowness stems from PHP inflating its load time to about 15-20sec. Despite my best work, I have been unable to trace why this happens. My guess is some other site on the cluster uses some really terrible algorithm to update\backup\cache things and it just takes up all the apache threads.

Dog

erisian pope wrote:

SeñorAmor wrote:

They need to make a "Yes, we know the forums are slow" sticky thread to eliminate threads like this one.

Bottom line is, until Mike and Jerry decide to go with different hosting, the forums are always gonna be slow. HomeLAN has proven time and again they cannot consistently handle the load that Penny Arcade brings. With HomeLAN being free for M & J, I cannot forsee a hosting change anytime in the near future, so, please, spare us the "the forums are slow" threads. We already know.

You say you already know (even though this was meant for admins) but I want to point out that it is not uncommon for Alpha to mention killing an IP that was session-flooding the forums. Somtimes slowdowns occur for correctable reasons. If noone with the ability to check for and rectify similar situations is actively browsing the forums, then perhaps a thread in the forum whose purpose includes pointing things out to the mods and admins might catch their attention.

I see nothing wrong with this thread other than it seems to have annoyed you even though you could simply not read it. The title of the thread was clear enough to inform you as to the nature of the content.

First, I'm not annoyed. I was just stating my piece.

Second, it wasn't meant as a bitch post; my apologies if it came across that way.

Finally, anyone with the ability to rectify rectifiable problems will already notice a board slowdown and will do whatever they can to rectify it. Telling them something they already know is just redundant.



PS - I might have overused 'rectify' and its variants.

erisian pope

SeñorAmor wrote:

erisian pope wrote:

SeñorAmor wrote:

They need to make a "Yes, we know the forums are slow" sticky thread to eliminate threads like this one.

Bottom line is, until Mike and Jerry decide to go with different hosting, the forums are always gonna be slow. HomeLAN has proven time and again they cannot consistently handle the load that Penny Arcade brings. With HomeLAN being free for M & J, I cannot forsee a hosting change anytime in the near future, so, please, spare us the "the forums are slow" threads. We already know.

You say you already know (even though this was meant for admins) but I want to point out that it is not uncommon for Alpha to mention killing an IP that was session-flooding the forums. Somtimes slowdowns occur for correctable reasons. If noone with the ability to check for and rectify similar situations is actively browsing the forums, then perhaps a thread in the forum whose purpose includes pointing things out to the mods and admins might catch their attention.

I see nothing wrong with this thread other than it seems to have annoyed you even though you could simply not read it. The title of the thread was clear enough to inform you as to the nature of the content.

First, I'm not annoyed. I was just stating my piece.

Second, it wasn't meant as a bitch post; my apologies if it came across that way.

Finally, anyone with the ability to rectify rectifiable problems will already notice a board slowdown and will do whatever they can to rectify it. Telling them something they already know is just redundant.



PS - I might have overused 'rectify' and its variants.

First - my mistake. It seemed to me that you were.

Second - noted, accepted, and reciprocated. Seeing as I thought you were annoyed and indirectly bitching at me, I became defensive. I debated deleting my post as I was feeling guilty about my defensivenes. So I, too, apologize.

Third - A good assumption that is probably correct most, if not all, of the time. But on the off chance that it was not noticed, or was noticed and assumed to be local to the person noticing and not affecting many if not all people - what does it hurt to make the thread so that people affected can:

(1) add their name to the list (communicationg that the experience is accross the board) and

(2) see a thread on it and know that it has been mentioned so that we don't end up with a half dozen threads in some/all of the forums hijacked to discuss the slowdowns.

(3) I think it helps to that on the day of the current manifestation, the admin who kills the session-flooding IP (for exampole) can then post what they found to be a problem and that they took steps to resolve it.

Many people feel better knowing those in authority are as informed as possible, and are doing what they can even if the overall problem is not addressable. Intellectually, I understand this is always the case, but it still warms my heart every time Alpha posts saying "people were having X problem and I fixed it temporarily by doing Y."

Perhaps a sticky thread (as you suggested) would be a good idea as a catchall for this kind of discussion.

Dog

erisian pope wrote:

SeñorAmor wrote:

erisian pope wrote:

SeñorAmor wrote:

They need to make a "Yes, we know the forums are slow" sticky thread to eliminate threads like this one.

Bottom line is, until Mike and Jerry decide to go with different hosting, the forums are always gonna be slow. HomeLAN has proven time and again they cannot consistently handle the load that Penny Arcade brings. With HomeLAN being free for M & J, I cannot forsee a hosting change anytime in the near future, so, please, spare us the "the forums are slow" threads. We already know.

You say you already know (even though this was meant for admins) but I want to point out that it is not uncommon for Alpha to mention killing an IP that was session-flooding the forums. Somtimes slowdowns occur for correctable reasons. If noone with the ability to check for and rectify similar situations is actively browsing the forums, then perhaps a thread in the forum whose purpose includes pointing things out to the mods and admins might catch their attention.

I see nothing wrong with this thread other than it seems to have annoyed you even though you could simply not read it. The title of the thread was clear enough to inform you as to the nature of the content.

First, I'm not annoyed. I was just stating my piece.

Second, it wasn't meant as a bitch post; my apologies if it came across that way.

Finally, anyone with the ability to rectify rectifiable problems will already notice a board slowdown and will do whatever they can to rectify it. Telling them something they already know is just redundant.



PS - I might have overused 'rectify' and its variants.

First - my mistake. It seemed to me that you were.

Second - noted, accepted, and reciprocated. Seeing as I thought you were annoyed and indirectly bitching at me, I became defensive. I debated deleting my post as I was feeling guilty about my defensivenes. So I, too, apologize.

Third - A good assumption that is probably correct most, if not all, of the time. But on the off chance that it was not noticed, or was noticed and assumed to be local to the person noticing and not affecting many if not all people - what does it hurt to make the thread so that people affected can:

(1) add their name to the list (communicationg that the experience is accross the board) and

(2) see a thread on it and know that it has been mentioned so that we don't end up with a half dozen threads in some/all of the forums hijacked to discuss the slowdowns.

(3) I think it helps to that on the day of the current manifestation, the admin who kills the session-flooding IP (for exampole) can then post what they found to be a problem and that they took steps to resolve it.

Many people feel better knowing those in authority are as informed as possible, and are doing what they can even if the overall problem is not addressable. Intellectually, I understand this is always the case, but it still warms my heart every time Alpha posts saying "people were having X problem and I fixed it temporarily by doing Y."

Perhaps a sticky thread (as you suggested) would be a good idea as a catchall for this kind of discussion.

You failed to respond to my rectify comment. I suggest you rectify that immediately.

erisian pope

SeñorAmor wrote:

erisian pope wrote:

SeñorAmor wrote:

erisian pope wrote:

SeñorAmor wrote:

They need to make a "Yes, we know the forums are slow" sticky thread to eliminate threads like this one.

Bottom line is, until Mike and Jerry decide to go with different hosting, the forums are always gonna be slow. HomeLAN has proven time and again they cannot consistently handle the load that Penny Arcade brings. With HomeLAN being free for M & J, I cannot forsee a hosting change anytime in the near future, so, please, spare us the "the forums are slow" threads. We already know.

You say you already know (even though this was meant for admins) but I want to point out that it is not uncommon for Alpha to mention killing an IP that was session-flooding the forums. Somtimes slowdowns occur for correctable reasons. If noone with the ability to check for and rectify similar situations is actively browsing the forums, then perhaps a thread in the forum whose purpose includes pointing things out to the mods and admins might catch their attention.

I see nothing wrong with this thread other than it seems to have annoyed you even though you could simply not read it. The title of the thread was clear enough to inform you as to the nature of the content.

First, I'm not annoyed. I was just stating my piece.

Second, it wasn't meant as a bitch post; my apologies if it came across that way.

Finally, anyone with the ability to rectify rectifiable problems will already notice a board slowdown and will do whatever they can to rectify it. Telling them something they already know is just redundant.



PS - I might have overused 'rectify' and its variants.

First - my mistake. It seemed to me that you were.

Second - noted, accepted, and reciprocated. Seeing as I thought you were annoyed and indirectly bitching at me, I became defensive. I debated deleting my post as I was feeling guilty about my defensivenes. So I, too, apologize.

Third - A good assumption that is probably correct most, if not all, of the time. But on the off chance that it was not noticed, or was noticed and assumed to be local to the person noticing and not affecting many if not all people - what does it hurt to make the thread so that people affected can:

(1) add their name to the list (communicationg that the experience is accross the board) and

(2) see a thread on it and know that it has been mentioned so that we don't end up with a half dozen threads in some/all of the forums hijacked to discuss the slowdowns.

(3) I think it helps to that on the day of the current manifestation, the admin who kills the session-flooding IP (for exampole) can then post what they found to be a problem and that they took steps to resolve it.

Many people feel better knowing those in authority are as informed as possible, and are doing what they can even if the overall problem is not addressable. Intellectually, I understand this is always the case, but it still warms my heart every time Alpha posts saying "people were having X problem and I fixed it temporarily by doing Y."

Perhaps a sticky thread (as you suggested) would be a good idea as a catchall for this kind of discussion.

You failed to respond to my rectify comment. I suggest you rectify that immediately.

I'll rectumfy you!

Chuffy

I'm actually having a problem in the fact that new topics or new replies to posts aren't turning the folder thing red...y'know.

And it only started happening when I logged out to see the new spiffy thing Alphamonkey had done...

Intruiging.

Legacy

The forums are acting rather weird right now...

Crazy slow...but then regular...and then just not loading...

Szechuanosaurus

The whole god damned internet is running slow for me right now. I blame teen pop sensation Jojo and expect Alpha to rectumfy the situation fartwith.

Thanatoid

The whole site is running EXTREMELY slow for me, and has been for the past few hours.

The Geek

I don't know about anyone else, but I would be all for Mike and Jerry to start taking donations again so they'd be able to get a reliable paid hosting service.

Älphämönkëy

oh I know what this is. This is penny arcade being raped for bandwidth on a comic day.
This page took 30 seconds to load but look at the server-side timers

(PHP: 0.3298s - SQL: 0.0621s) - SQL queries: 9 - GZIP enabled

This is due to the fact that HomeLAN has mod_bandwith installed.

Jinn

I beat Baldur's Gate 2 waiting for this page to load.


I think The Geek is on to something.

erisian pope

alphamonkey wrote:

oh I know what this is. This is penny arcade being raped for bandwidth on a comic day.
This page took 30 seconds to load but look at the server-side timers

(PHP: 0.3298s - SQL: 0.0621s) - SQL queries: 9 - GZIP enabled

This is due to the fact that HomeLAN has mod_bandwith installed.

I can't interprate the server stuff you posted, but are you saying that HomeLAN is restricting PA's bandwidth?

Is this relatively new? The forums have had occasional slowdowns and stuff in the past, but the last 2 or 3 days have been unprecedented since I have been posting/lurking here (last summer - which by no means makes me an authority, I realize).

GABBO GABBO GABBO

The slowness has killed the boards. No one is posting.

Moriveth

This is ridiculous, the slowest I've ever seen the boards.

Hopefully it'll get fixed soon, or I'll have to, like, go outside.

erisian pope

Moriveth wrote:

This is ridiculous, the slowest I've ever seen the boards.

Hopefully it'll get fixed soon, or I'll have to, like, go outside.

:shock: Aren't there bears outside?

Faricazy

I think its works now. If i can post thats good.
















Bears smell server otage you know. They were clawing at my windows. :shock:

Älphämönkëy

I sent an email to homelan and they were very speedy in fixing it up. It was about 5 minutes after I sent the email that the site came back up and at full speed

Van

alphamonkey wrote:

I sent an email to homelan and they were very speedy in fixing it up. It was about 5 minutes after I sent the email that the site came back up and at full speed

It's still very slow. For me, at least.

Moriveth

Van wrote:

alphamonkey wrote:

I sent an email to homelan and they were very speedy in fixing it up. It was about 5 minutes after I sent the email that the site came back up and at full speed

It's still very slow. For me, at least.

Me too, but at least it loads in Firefox now, and a lot faster than it did earlier.

so)(go

Moriveth wrote:

Van wrote:

alphamonkey wrote:

I sent an email to homelan and they were very speedy in fixing it up. It was about 5 minutes after I sent the email that the site came back up and at full speed

It's still very slow. For me, at least.

Me too, but at least it loads in Firefox now, and a lot faster than it did earlier.

It is faster, but damn its slow.