extremely slow forum/ 500 internal server error

[Legolass]

hi there,

recently we have been experiencing a very slow forum, and regularly get '500 internal server' errors.

i contacted our host and enabled the error logging for the server space and this is the errors we have been getting:

[Mon Jan 17 19:09:44 2011] [warn] [client 90.212.146.209] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 120 seconds
[Mon Jan 17 19:09:44 2011] [error] [client 90.212.146.209] Premature end of script headers: index.php
[Mon Jan 17 19:11:54 2011] [warn] [client 90.212.146.209] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 120 seconds
[Mon Jan 17 19:11:54 2011] [error] [client 90.212.146.209] Premature end of script headers: index.php
[Mon Jan 17 19:12:24 2011] [warn] [client 90.212.146.209] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 120 seconds
[Mon Jan 17 19:12:24 2011] [error] [client 90.212.146.209] Premature end of script headers: index.php
[Mon Jan 17 19:12:27 2011] [warn] [client 90.212.146.209] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 120 seconds
[Mon Jan 17 19:12:27 2011] [error] [client 90.212.146.209] Premature end of script headers: index.php
[Mon Jan 17 19:14:38 2011] [warn] [client 80.229.220.77] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 120 seconds
[Mon Jan 17 19:14:38 2011] [error] [client 80.229.220.77] Premature end of script headers: index.php
[Mon Jan 17 19:14:56 2011] [warn] [client 80.229.220.77] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 120 seconds
[Mon Jan 17 19:14:56 2011] [error] [client 80.229.220.77] Premature end of script headers: index.phpi

i sent this to their support and got this reply:

Thank you for contacting Online Support. 

We have reviewed your account and could not find any issues with the server. The type of error you are experiencing is most likely caused by coding or scripting. Unfortunately, because we do not provide coding support, we are unable to determine what specifically in your code may be causing the error. However, the following may be of some assistance in diagnosing the problem:

One of your scripts is taking too long to run and is timing out, please optimize your scripts.

You may wish to review your code to determine if there are any issues, because it appears that is the most likely cause of the error. You may also wish to enable detailed error messages as a temporary diagnostic measure. The procedure for this will vary, depending on the scripting language being used. We also recommend consulting both the vendor's online documentation, as well as the large number of online forums dedicated to coding and scripting.

If you determine there is no issue with the code itself and believe the issue is server related, please reply with specific evidence of this and we will investigate the matter further.


Please let us know if we can assist you in any other way.

now i have no idea what i am looking at with the coding. all i know is the main website page is running fine, its when we go into the forum we get the issue. can anyone help? i dont know enough about webby stuff to look much further into this myself.

if you need any more information please let me know,

forum is here: http://www.ixi-guild.com/forum

thanks in advance

Mari
x

[MrPhil]

I don't think that mod_fcgid has anything to do with the database (MySQL), but on the off chance that the database is at the bottom of this, go into the SMF Admin and look at the error log. Perhaps your error log has gotten huge and is slowing down the database to the point where your forum times out? If there are any errors listed, write them down and clear the log. You might have to go into phpMyAdmin to look at other SMF "log" files and see if any of them have gotten huge for some reason and need to be trimmed (emptied). Your forum page shows that your forum is quite small, so I doubt that anything else is overflowing. But, if you have a huge number of errors that you aren't attending to, that could fill up your database and really slow you down. You also might try switching back to the default theme for a while to see if your chosen theme is at fault.

[Legolass]

thanks for that, but my error log is near empty apart from the odd member getting their password wrong. there were over 12,000 errors at one point, almost one every few minutes, something to do with there not being a robots file, but i fixed that and got no more errors, but we still have the issue

one of our members said 'i tryed to do a Error Counter for the forums problem .. and it looks like there is problem comes from the forums design' i am using the 'Raven' theme which may not be updated for 2.0 rc4, could this cause this issue? i will try the default theme for a while and see if it helps

[Legolass]

okay HEEELP!! lol

tried to return to default theme and got this:

Template Parse Error!

There was a problem loading the /Themes/default/index.template.php template or language file. Please check the syntax and try again - remember, single quotes (') often have to be escaped with a slash (\). To see more specific error information from PHP, try accessing the file directly.

You may want to try to refresh this page or use the default theme.

Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '<' in .../Themes/default/index.template.php on line 354
345:    echo '
346:    </div></div>', !empty($settings['forum_width']) ? '
347: </div>' : '';
348: }
349:
350: function template_html_below()
351: {
352:    global $context, $settings, $options, $scripturl, $txt, $modSettings;
353:
354: </body></html>';
355: }
356:
357: // Show a linktree. This is that thing that shows "My Community | General Category | General Discussion"..
358: function theme_linktree($force_show = false)

EDIT: I downloaded the forum files again and uploaded the index.template.php and this seems to have fixed whatever the issue was that broke the forum. i'll leave the default template up for 48 hours and see if we get anymore slowness or 500 server errors

[Joker™]

Any update on your issue?