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gpspassion
Junior Member
260 Posts |
 Posted - 22 June 2005 : 17:12:06
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I started using Snitz back in late 2002 when I started my site (www.gpspassion.com) as a hobby. It has now become a pretty popular site about GPS with 15,000+ unique daily visitors. About a year ago I switched from Acces to SQL Server, that helped...for a while, then my host put me on a more powerful (shared server) several times but the forums are sometimes unusable as they get very slow. I bit the bullet and attempted to move to my own dedicated server but the P4/2.4 I got just couldn't cope. I guess I could get a Dual Xeon at 2.4/3.2 but everyone is telling me it shouldn't have to be like that.
So anyway, was wondering if anyone had been though that ? The Snitz forums must get a lot of traffic too and they are amazingly fast! I guess I should specify that I am still running 3.4.03 so upgrading to 3.4.05 might help although I'm not sure how much and given the amount of customization I have done I'm a bit hesitant to take the step, unless someone tells me it could be night and day ;-)
Anyway thanks for reading and thanks to these wonderful forums, without which...well... |
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 18:49:10
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| Well, first off...you have a TON of forums on your default page. Probably the most I've ever seen. Anyways...what i'd suggest is enabling the page timer first to see which pages are taking the longest to generate. You can go through and cut out code you don't need or don't use. Also, how many active users at a time do you usually have? Is it slow only on your forum or the entire site? |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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gpspassion
Junior Member
260 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 19:15:17
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Snitz has quite a few too ;-) but yes there are probably too many and I broke them down in categories. Not sure about active users in the forums but that's where most of the activity takes place and at peak times there are up to 550 simultaneous users, but this moring with 250 users there were apparently about 700 connections to the SQL database, hence the problem most likely.
There are also about 64,000 members accounts and loading the list to edit a forum takes forever. I upgraded a backup copy of the database to 3.4.05 and there seems to be no change there. I really wonder how this snitz forums can be made to be so fast ! |
Edited by - gpspassion on 22 June 2005 19:18:30 |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 19:21:15
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quote:
but this moring with 250 users there were apparently about 700
This is not normal and should be fixed as your first priority, it is almost certainly what is causing your prolems, even with several hundred simultaneous users you should only have a dozen or so open connections |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 19:28:30
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| a 2.4Ghz P4 should easily cope with your forum, but will need at least 1Gb of ram to be safe, other than that Snitz is not that resource hungry, I can give you the url of a site which gets 25000+ unique visitors a day and it runs quite happily on a via EPIA 800Mhz |
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 19:42:19
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| Your customizations likely do not close DB connections when they are no longer needed. Have a look at the code and make sure every connection is closed as soon as possible. |
Snitz 3.4 Readme | Like the support? Support Snitz too |
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gpspassion
Junior Member
260 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 21:24:26
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Thanks guys, that looks like something I need to look into ASAP and gives me hope it can be fixed ! This was not a known issue with 3.4.03 was it ?
Thing is I really didn't do that many customizations other than the side bar and I don't think that would create problems with connections. Can you think of an obvious place where I could start looking ? I realize this may not be very easy to point at. I guess one option would be for me to put back a "clean" install of 3.4.03 and see what happens.
On the time it takes to load the forum properties, do you think this is not normal either ? Not to mention the search that maxes out the CPU and takes forever to load. |
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Blackpearl
Starting Member
Thailand
35 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 22:38:44
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| It's slowing.....-_-! |
^_^....If you see me....you will love me....I"M SO HANDSOME....^_^
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ruirib
Snitz Forums Admin
Portugal
26364 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 22:40:45
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64,000 members is a lot. I can understand if it takes some time to load forum properties. Have you considered deleting non-active members?
Also I have posted a modified search.asp page that may alleviate your troubles. And if you can add full text searching to your SQL Server DB, gary has a mod that will even improve more.
AFAIK, Snitz base versions do not have issues with conections. |
Snitz 3.4 Readme | Like the support? Support Snitz too |
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sr_erick
Senior Member
USA
1318 Posts |
Posted - 22 June 2005 : 22:44:45
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| Like these guys have said...db connections should only be abour 10 to 12. I have on average 150 to 250 people online at a time in the winter season on my forum and that's all the connections I ever get. I'd first go with their suggestions. Out of curiosity, did you enable the page generation counter? |
Erick
Snowmobile Fanatics
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gpspassion
Junior Member
260 Posts |
Posted - 23 June 2005 : 06:51:26
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Thanks for the help guys. I have upgraded to 3.4.05 on the new server I used temporarily yesterday and will try some load tests if I can figure out how to do them anyone know how to do that ?
1. Deleting inactive members, I did toy with the idea, but the MOD I found (inactive_users-34-11.zip) for that did not work very well (you had to delete individually and I kept getting an Invalid use of Null: 'cLng' /forumsen/pop_delete.asp, line 867 etror), maybe I'll give it another shot. Id there maybe a better MOD now ?
2. Tried the new search.asp on 3.4.05 (this one right ?) and yes it loads instantly ! Problem is it's still timing out when searching, unlike the Snitz forums, how do you guys do it ! On my forums sqlserver.exe just maxes out the CPU and times out after 30 seconds unless you limit to the subject - I might actually force that choice !
3. Page generation counter=timer or are you referring to something else ? It it's the timer, I know it's slow ;-) |
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pdrg
Support Moderator
United Kingdom
2897 Posts |
Posted - 23 June 2005 : 07:13:28
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remember sessions hold about 35k memory each, so us ethat as a rough calc to see how much memory you're chewing before you start paging to disk (which makes like a lot slower)
hth |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 23 June 2005 : 07:20:48
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the search here uses the full text search mod, the "improved" sql search still timed out on some searches, but was a lot more useful than the generic search, the sql server is also very fast which helps enormously, page generation times were improved massively when I upgraded my SQL server machine a few months ago, if you have a database on a shared sql server, it may be that which is massively overloaded, if that is the case even a quad server for your website wouldn't make any difference.
if searching is maxing out your sqlserver.exe then there is definately something seriously wrong with your sql server setup. How did you create your sql database ? did you do an upgrade from access or use snitz to create the database?
Yes, ruirib means the page timer, it will show you how long your pages take to generate, which may or may not be how long it takes for them to appear in your browser and will indicate whether it is the code or network issues,I just visted your site, it seems pretty quick to me |
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HuwR
Forum Admin
United Kingdom
20584 Posts |
Posted - 23 June 2005 : 07:26:52
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| what connection string are you using in your config ? |
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gpspassion
Junior Member
260 Posts |
Posted - 23 June 2005 : 09:06:44
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Yes right now it's pretty fast, there are apparently 414 connected users, it's when it hits 500 that it gradually starts dying. When I moved to my own P4/2.4 server yesterday it was completely stalled. I believe my host has Dual 2.8 Xeon's for the IIS server and a cluster for the SQL Server so that probably helps. As you say there seems to be something seriously wrong with my code ! :-( By the ENG forums are here http://www.gpspassion.com/forumsen/default.asp?_SetCurrentVersion=EN&Group=2
1. On the database upgrade to SQL, a friend did that for me with MS tools I believe
2. Timer has been activated
3. Connection string is....er wow that doesn't look right !
'strDBType = "sqlserver"
strDBType = "access"
'strDBType = "mysql"
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strConnString = "driver={SQL Server};server=xxxxxxxx
I'm pretty clueless but I guess it means that being configured for an access type database it might be opening new connections each time and not closing them properly, which would be a huge problem of course...I have fixed that, let's see now. Wow that would be a stupid mistake (not mine BTW  ) but a very easy fix.
4. Any hints on how to remove inactive users efficiently ? |
Edited by - gpspassion on 23 June 2005 09:12:24 |
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pdrg
Support Moderator
United Kingdom
2897 Posts |
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