Information on Site Problems

[mith]

So, one of the adjustments I made the other night was to change the max_execution_time for php to 10 seconds, rather than the default of 30. My experience today has been that some requests (mostly those calling posting.php - posts and edits) have been slow, but go through after running into the 10 second limit. Has everyone else had a similar experience?

I think the stats programs (bandwidth, etc.) may have been largely responsible for the white screen - I haven't seen any since I turned them off. The slowness hasn't been a constant thing, which suggests that we are just running out of RAM (some combination of too many users doing stuff at once, a large database, and perhaps some inefficient queries in the posting.php code).

I don't know that we'll ever get to the source of the problem before we move/migrate, but I'll keep tweaking things to limit the annoyance until then. In the meantime:

If you get a white screen

(whether blank, or the "out of memory" error), post here. I don't need you to quote it, and I don't need posts from ten different users about having the problem in the same time frame - one will suffice.

If you experience slowness when posting/editing

, first, be patient. It's likely that the post will go through once the problem times out. If it stays stuck for longer than 20 seconds, hit stop on your browser window, and either hit back and refresh or open up a new window/tab to check to see whether your post went through or not.

If you are having repeated problems

with slow page loads and posts not going through, close your browser and take a short break from the site. Bombarding the site with requests out of frustration will only make things worse.

Thanks,
mith

[ShadowLurker]

First, big LOL at the Site Problems leading to a quintuple Global Announcement.

So I'm mainly noticing slowness during the early morning times (like 2AM, 5AM) and I'm in EST so this is definitely off peak times in terms of traffic so is the problem definitely a function of volume?

I suppose that it could be our Aussie users simply use up a ton more RAM on average...

[animorpherv1]

So, the problem solver is to ban Aussie users?

....


....


....

I say do it.

[mith]

I totally did that on purpose...

If you've checked to see whether or not your post went through, and it isn't there

, it probably just hasn't refreshed properly.

The early morning slowness was probably due to the stats running; when I decided they might be a problem, I set them to only run in the morning to see if that fixed things other times. It shouldn't be any slower in the mornings since Thursday, though. Unless you're right about our Aussie users.

[PokerFace]

Irony is a fickle mistress since this was orignally quintupple posted. And we can't get rid of the aussies. I like Oman and the rest of those guys. They make me laugh and are fun to lynch . And besides I have been noticing scattered slowness between 10am to about 4pm when i have logged on sometimes at work. Worse as things get closer to 4 in afternoon. Other than that not so bad.

[Supermouse The Rodent]

I've been having constant problems with white screens and o-o-m errors for the last several days. I decided to have a marathon read on old games, so it's probably Sod's law.

I haven't had any issues tonight.

[Supermouse The Rodent]

I've been having constant problems with white screens and o-o-m errors for the last several days. I decided to have a marathon read on old games, so it's probably Sod's law.

I haven't had any issues tonight.

Until I tried to post this. Bah.

[Supermouse The Rodent]

I've been having constant problems with white screens and o-o-m errors for the last several days. I decided to have a marathon read on old games, so it's probably Sod's law.

I haven't had any issues tonight.

Until I tried to post this. Bah.

[Thok]

So I am literally unable to edit posts right now. (Specifically in Newbie 887, I had to post a new vote count since I couldn't edit an old vote count.)

Edit: Apparently edits are really slow, slower than posting. Sigh.

[Papa Zito]

What I've noticed is that I'll hit the Post button, and the browser will just sit there grinning at me. If I go to another tab and re-enter the site, then go to the subforum, I won't see my name on the Last Posted list of the thread. But when I go into the thread, my post will be there.

Also, sometimes the multipost thing happens even if I hit the button once. The browser may be resending the request on timeout or something. Not sure if there's something you can do about that.

[Battousai]

Having problems sending pm's right now, as it fails on me. I'll wait 10 minutes and try again...

[SpyreX]

I've been hitting, again, spans of time (5-20 minutes) where the site flat out will not load anything but gives no white screen or other errors... then it's totally fine. For a while. Then back to step 1.

[Faraday]

I haven't been able to get onto the site for ages. I've checked a few times every so often and yeah, site isn't loading.

[imkingdavid]

I am experiencing slowness loading anything.

[Netopalis]

Everything is slow, but I've made some particular observations in posting. When I click the submit button, the page starts to try loading up the post successful page. Sometimes it gets there, other times it doesn't. I left one trying to get to the next page overnight and it still hadn't loaded....But whether the next page is loaded or not, the post usually goes through, even if the loading is canceled after a few seconds.

[farside22]

It took me 10 minutes to post something last night.
So far today still having problems loading.

[imkingdavid]

Currently there are no loading problems.

[DocPotter]

Yeah, I've been getting a few white screens in the last hour or so.

[Oman]

Just struggled with editing a post. Finally got it through by posting a new one and deleting the old instead.

[mith]

I'll try to find some time to do some more investigating and tweaking this afternoon. No idea what caused the white screens this morning.

[shaft.ed]

Got a white screen last night at 9:05PM, and this morning at 9:18AM. Pacific.

Pages are really slow loading.

[animorpherv1]

Pages are really slow loading. Editing is really slow. Posting is really slow.

[Pomegranate]

I've found that pressing submit, stopping the page load, then previewing the post again often loads the post more quickly than otherwise.

[Thestatusquo]

Currently there are no loading problems.

I know we all like to feel like we're a "part of it," but I'm pretty sure that by not posting here, it's assumed you're not having loading problems. Lets not clutter up this thread with useless shit, k?

[MishMashHydra]

I've found that, in general, when my browser takes forever, pressing submit multiple times, refreshing, etc, merely exacerbates the problem. But that's just me. When are we migrating?