Forum slows down

[ZeroShiki]

Hi!

I'm sorta new to this thing and I'm only helping some friends out.

We've got a small private board with around  50 members. The thing is, at certain times of the day, we all get together and comment on a certain event as its happening. So, you have 30 something people repeatedly hitting refresh and posting comments. It slows the site down significantly.

My question is whether SMF has anything to do with the slowdown or is it mostly a host thing?

Thanks in advance!

[[Unknown]]

It's probably a host thing.  Upload the attached file to your site and give us a link, and we can tell you more.

-[Unknown]

[ZeroShiki]

Whoops. Someone from my board posted here.

She uploaded the status.php

hxxp:www.whiteyouhuckleberry.com/status.php [nonactive]

[CallieK]

The host is Phenominet.

[[Unknown]]

Load averages are good, cpu is fine... memory usage is atrocius.  MySQL is very much not configured properly.  You're also on MySQL 3.23.x!

MySQL 3.23.x is very old - from 2003.  Since most people even reasonably concerned about speed use MySQL 4.0 or 4.1 (both stable, both newer than what you have), SMF has been of course optimized for 4.0.

While your forum still should be able to handle 50 users, there are some things that just won't work as well in 3.23.x, and this is unavoidable.  I strongly suggest you ask your host to: (it's okay if you don't know what an "RPM" is, they should.)

• Upgrade MySQL to a release MySQL AB considers stable, such as 4.0.  On Redhat, it's as easy as installing an RPM.
  
• Optimize MySQL's settings.  The box clearly doesn't have enough memory, but a table_cache of 128 would help a lot and use little ram.
  
• Check to see what is using up all of the ram - swap usage shouldn't be at 50%, usually.
  
• Install an accelerator/bytecode cacher, such as Turck MMCache, eAccelerator, Zend Optimizer, or ZPS.  There are RPMs for these too.
  
  If it seems slow after this, or they are not willing to make any changes to your server, please take a look at the status.php page when the site seems slow, and post here what it says.
  
  By the by, you need to upgrade .
  
  -[Unknown]

[ZeroShiki]

Thanks!

We'll try that and see if it'll help.

[CallieK]

I try to upgrade, and when I do, it gives me a list of sucessful installed actions, then it says, "Some of the files this package needs to modify are not writable. This needs to be changed by logging into FTP and chmoding the files." and asks me for my FTP info. AFAIK everything is chmoded properly. I filled out the info and hit proceed, and it just brings me to the same page.

[CallieK]

This is what the host had to say:

Those are all excellent suggestions if you were a dedicated (or even
semi-dedicated) account.  Since you are a shared account, they don't
really apply.  One of the primary features of shared accounts is that
all
users get the same software, so we can't be upgrading to special
versions
just for one person.  Also, monopolizing a large section of memory for
one
person table cache wouldn't be fair to the remaining customers.  I can
enable eAccelerator though, as we have this installed.  The swap issue
sounds bad (to people who understand it) but actually it is almost all
used by software that is installed for customers but they aren't using
it. 
In this case, it is efficient to swap it out.  It is more obvious that
the
swap is being used efficiently when you realize that cache and buffers
are
taking up more memory is swapped out, but like I said, the swapped out
memory is stuff that should be on disk rather than real ram anyway.

If eAccelerator isn't speeding things up enough and you'd like to
discuss
other options (which may cost money) just let us know. Thanks!

Could someone translate? I think he's saying all they'll do is the eaccelerator?

[Ben_S]

Given that most sites these days make use of MySQL a shared hosting box should have it's MySQL config tweaked to give MySQL a good bit of memory.

Using MySQL 3.x is not a good idea since it is old, effectivly EOL and the MySQL people themselves recommend the use of 4.0.x.

Frankly, if I were you, I'd move hosts, the P3 1GHz was a great processor a few years back, unfortunatly time has moved on. 50 Members is nothing, but that server should handle it easy but clearly it's not. 1GB of swap usage is never good and that box has 4GB of ram so something is swallowing it up.

SMF is optimized for MySQL 4, it will run much better on a server with MySQL 4, ask them if theres any reason that they are using MySQL 3?

[CallieK]

Given that most sites these days make use of MySQL a shared hosting box should have it's MySQL config tweaked to give MySQL a good bit of memory.

Using MySQL 3.x is not a good idea since it is old, effectivly EOL and the MySQL people themselves recommend the use of 4.0.x.

Frankly, if I were you, I'd move hosts, the P3 1GHz was a great processor a few years back, unfortunatly time has moved on. 50 Members is nothing, but that server should handle it easy but clearly it's not. 1GB of swap usage is never good and that box has 4GB of ram so something is swallowing it up.

SMF is optimized for MySQL 4, it will run much better on a server with MySQL 4, ask them if theres any reason that they are using MySQL 3?

Thanks for your help

Is there anywhere that is somewhat comparable? We're paying 50/year for space and domain. We wouldn't mind switching domain names, and we could use that one for something else.

Also just how difficult is it to move an entire forum to a new place?

[Furvert]

http://furvert.net/smf/status.php

this looks really bad?

Opened vs. Open tables:
(table_cache)    215806.4277 (should be <= 80)

and others are outside the range it specifies.
Do I have a problem?

Thanks for any help

[Ben_S]

I couldn't recommend a host from personal experience as it's been a while since I used shared hosting, however if I were in the market for a host, it probably go for someone who has supported the community here by way of an ad campaign, such as Charlottezweb, Rochen or Dean Solutions (there are probably more but I can't think of them at the moment).

Moving server is fairly easy, see http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=15252.0

@Furvert, it could probably do with some tweaking, most hosts run things with the default config which is pretty poor, if your forum is slow, it may be worthwhile asking your host to tweak things a bit.

[JayBachatero]

I'm kind of illiterate when it comes to server stuff so i don't know if this is good or bad can some one analyze it http://www.kevmundial.com/status.php

[Furvert]

Thanks
Yes my forum is sometimes slow but I have always assumed it depended on other loads on my server.
I average about 2-3 gigs a week on my main website, 150000 server requests/2000 page views a week where SMF says 20000 page views a month and scores about 140000 server requests a month. Bandwidth used is approximately 1.3 gigs in 3 months which sounds high but is likely correct due to images. I have thousands viewing the main site and only a couple hundred so far on the forum. I had thousands on my yahoo group but they havent joined the forum yet.

I changed to SMF1.1B3P mostly for thumbnails to reduce image loads when someone reviews post replies.

I have not approached my 100gigs/month limit so I am not too worried.

So if you think I need to ask the host to tweak something, I will need to know what to ask them.
I suspect alot of things are shared, so likely they will dislike the request, thus best to have a very good reason to ask them.

Thanks for the help

[Ben_S]

I suspect alot of things are shared, so likely they will dislike the request, thus best to have a very good reason to ask them.

It will help everyone on the server and as your servers MySQL is fairly heavilly used 70 odd queries / sec, it will help everyone and generally reduce server load if done properly.

[Furvert]

Thanks
So they need to adjust setting om MySQL
Do you know what they need to change?

http://furvert.net/smf/phpinfo.php

Shows some of the info on it, it shows Client API version 3.23.49 which is old I think from post above.
So do they need upgrade or tweaks?

Thanks for any help
My first forum view today took many seconds to show, I will turn on the render timer

edit-timer says .2 to 2 seconds on some pages, home runs .5-1 sec but it takes alot longer than reported so rest must be download time. Odd I am on 5meg cable so something must be goofy on that.

[[Unknown]]

http://furvert.net/smf/phpinfo.php

Shows some of the info on it, it shows Client API version 3.23.49 which is old I think from post above.
So do they need upgrade or tweaks?

That looks okay, but no optimizer/accelerator.

http://www.kevmundial.com/status.php

Horrible load averages.

-[Unknown]

[Nitro]

good thing i found this thread, well i was trying to figure out what is the problem with my forum.
can someone tell me if my stats look good:
http://mypowerforum.com/bb/status.php
i just took a look and i saw many <should be... so i am thinking this is not good, so what is your recommendation? thank you so mcuh!

[[Unknown]]

Memory usage is bad.  Load averages aren't available... cpu usage is too good to be true, must be a virtual-private server or something.

Your table_cache is way too low, I suggest 256 or 512.  Your key buffer is small, but there's not much ram available.  Your thread_cache_size should be at least 8.

Doesn't look like you're using an accelerator like eAccelerator...

-[Unknown]

[Nitro]

i am using a shared hosting.
i will pass this along my host, i assume they are the ones who can change the table_cache to 512 and the thread_cache_size, is that right?

thank you [Unknown]!