Newbie Needs Advice

dimensionmedia · July 05, 2005, 10:39:45 AM

Greetings... i've taken over a LARGE website getting a ton of traffic (over a million hits a day right now). They are using SMF 1.0 RC2 (yeah, I know, really old). Currently, the web server is crashing - many times due to many people using the forums (hundreds). It looks like SMF is using alot of memory, and perhaps causing the mysql services to choke.

I know I got to upgrade... but how easy is it from my current version? Also, what kind of stress can SMF take? My client wants to continue the forum so anyone here run boards that have over 400 people in them at once?

One important factor... my site is using SMF as a login/logout for the entire site, even outside the forums. I'm guessing the previous developer custom coded the pages.

Thanks!

Trekkie101 · July 05, 2005, 10:55:31 AM

Its as easy as uploading the new files and running a quick script!

http://www.simplemachines.org/download.php

The file you want it, http://www.simplemachines.org/download.php/smf_1-1-beta3p_upgrade.zip, then extract and override the current files on the site, then run upgrade.php.

SMF can take huge loads, http://www.redandwhitekop.com/forum/ 1278 Guests, 561 Users (18 Hidden) Users active in past 30 minutes. And its still loading in 0.2 seconds

(Thats 1 server btw)

Now thats good, also there are some small database tweaks you can make to make things faster. SMF 1.1 is already more efficient, its only beta just now but is very stable and probably a better idea to upgrade to.

dimensionmedia · July 05, 2005, 11:05:06 AM

Thanks Trekkie. I knew SMF could handle big loads, but this puts me to ease.

I'm wondering why I'm having problems... maybe SMF 1.0 RC2 maybe is not as efficient?

I have a single server, Dual Intel Xeon 2.4 with 1GB RAM. The server usually crashes when there's about 300 people online (about 1/3 of them users). The server is getting pounded, but I can pretty much say SMF is the problem (I turn it off, and the server stays up).

I guess upgrading is my next step.

Tomer · July 05, 2005, 11:08:16 AM

I would also say upgrading would help your board the best.

You can also try running the maintenance tasks in the admin panel, that may help.

Good Luck

Trekkie101 · July 05, 2005, 11:09:04 AM

I know SMF 1.1 is much more efficient.

Also ive you can change certain tables to InnoDB (search for which ones) and that increases the efficiency of MySQL.

As for it crashing, it shouldnt do that. Is the server MySQL 3 or 4?, SMF was optimised for MySQL 4 and will work a lot better on that.

Do you have a php accelarator installed to help speed things up and cause less load?

And finally, is the server configured to give optimum performance, hopefully you dont have all that ram going to waste.

Ben_S · July 05, 2005, 11:44:52 AM

Have you optimized your MySQL config, if not then you can expect it to crash, the default config isn't good for anything but a small bit of MySQL usage.

dimensionmedia · July 05, 2005, 02:54:27 PM

Trekkie: It's mySQL 4.

Tomer: I've already tried the maintenance tasks, but again, this is an old version of SMF.

Ben: I'm currently having this decicated server through a third-party hosting company - how does one optimize the MYSQL config? Is this something they can easily do? I think they have claimed that they modified it somewhat already.

i'm planning on upgrading this afternoon/evening, then monitoring it.

in addition, could the fact that the WHOLE WEBSITE is using the login complicate matters? Users are able to login on the customized homepage. The forum homepage is actually a subpage from the main navigation.

Trekkie101 · July 05, 2005, 03:12:39 PM

Nah that *shouldnt* cause any problems.

Can you post a phpinfo page? What is phpinfo.php?

That will help a bit in seeing if its configured right, and yeah your company should be able to do it pretty easily if they know what they are doing.

dimensionmedia · July 05, 2005, 05:22:45 PM

phpinfo page:

http://andyroddick.com/phpinfo.php

Trekkie101 · July 05, 2005, 06:15:11 PM

Its obvious from that some tweaking has been done. Although im not too great at server settings, the server itself seems to be pretty good, more power than what runs this forum anyway.

dimensionmedia · July 05, 2005, 06:21:55 PM

Someone suggested that it might be the network that my hosting provider is on (10mbs vs. 100 mbs?) or that the server isn't configured properly. I'm hoping that when I move over to a $500/month hosting provider, I can host the 1000-2000 numbers in a SMF forum! :-)

[Unknown] · July 05, 2005, 10:19:13 PM

Quote from: dimensionmedia on July 05, 2005, 10:39:45 AM
Greetings... i've taken over a LARGE website getting a ton of traffic (over a million hits a day right now). They are using SMF 1.0 RC2 (yeah, I know, really old). Currently, the web server is crashing - many times due to many people using the forums (hundreds). It looks like SMF is using alot of memory, and perhaps causing the mysql services to choke.

It can be fixed. I would assume your server isn't well optimized from your description; I've seen huge and very active SMF forums, that have not crashed - such as Ben_S's.

QuoteAlso, what kind of stress can SMF take? My client wants to continue the forum so anyone here run boards that have over 400 people in them at once?

400 is very doable, with a properly configured server.

Quote from: dimensionmedia on July 05, 2005, 11:05:06 AM
I'm wondering why I'm having problems... maybe SMF 1.0 RC2 maybe is not as efficient?

While it isn't as efficient, it's not the root of your problems... at a point SMF gets very limited by the server configuration - and, unfortunately, the default install of MySQL (which so many hosts and sites use) is not very good.

Quote from: dimensionmedia on July 05, 2005, 11:05:06 AM
I have a single server, Dual Intel Xeon 2.4 with 1GB RAM. The server usually crashes when there's about 300 people online (about 1/3 of them users). The server is getting pounded, but I can pretty much say SMF is the problem (I turn it off, and the server stays up).

This server here is a Celeron 1700 Mhz with 512 megs of ram. It runs both yabbse.org and simplemachines.org. Apache has crashed, but only because its log files got too large.

When you say crashing, what exactly do you mean? What are the load averages? Is MySQL restarting? Does Apache write anything in its log?

Quote from: dimensionmedia on July 05, 2005, 02:54:27 PM
in addition, could the fact that the WHOLE WEBSITE is using the login complicate matters? Users are able to login on the customized homepage. The forum homepage is actually a subpage from the main navigation.

No, that shouldn't hurt anything.

Quote from: dimensionmedia on July 05, 2005, 05:22:45 PM
phpinfo page:

http://andyroddick.com/phpinfo.php

You're not using eAccelerator or any other similar PHP bytecode optimizer/cacher. That can decrease load averages by a decent amount, and memory usage as well.

Quote from: dimensionmedia on July 05, 2005, 06:21:55 PM
Someone suggested that it might be the network that my hosting provider is on (10mbs vs. 100 mbs?) or that the server isn't configured properly. I'm hoping that when I move over to a $500/month hosting provider, I can host the 1000-2000 numbers in a SMF forum! :-)

I don't think that's necessary. Do you have root access to the server?

-[Unknown]

dimensionmedia · July 06, 2005, 07:16:48 PM

I don't have access to the root. I've been hearing different opinons that the server might not be configured properly, others say the configuration is good. I want to ensure that we make the server move (which is being done for other reasons besides forum issues) that we'll be ok. i'm concerned that the SMF is making too many database calls (or something like that).

From what I gather, it sounds like a server config issue.

Ben_S · July 06, 2005, 08:11:07 PM

What [Unknown] says is correct, ignore anything else on this thread.

[Unknown] · July 06, 2005, 09:22:57 PM

Here, upload this. It will help determine how well MySQL is configured.

-[Unknown]

dimensionmedia · July 09, 2005, 10:53:24 AM

Please take a look:

http://andyroddick.com/status.php

Please note that I am out of town, so I had to put the forums in maintenance mode in case there were server problems.

[Unknown] · July 19, 2005, 08:07:22 PM

Sorry for the late response.

The load averages look alright, but MySQL definitely isn't configured properly.

It looks like query_cache_size is 0 - it should be at least 32M. You seem to have the ram for it. And, table_cache should be 256 or 512, not 64. I think thread_cache_size should be 24 or so on that server, but it's just a guess.

You'd probably see a good enough improvement just from that. Couple it with eAccelerator, and you'll see just as big a change as most people do when I configure their servers reasonably close to properly.

-[Unknown]

dimensionmedia · July 21, 2005, 10:27:06 PM

Quote from: [Unknown] on July 19, 2005, 08:07:22 PM
Sorry for the late response.

The load averages look alright, but MySQL definitely isn't configured properly.

It looks like query_cache_size is 0 - it should be at least 32M. You seem to have the ram for it. And, table_cache should be 256 or 512, not 64. I think thread_cache_size should be 24 or so on that server, but it's just a guess.

You'd probably see a good enough improvement just from that. Couple it with eAccelerator, and you'll see just as big a change as most people do when I configure their servers reasonably close to properly.

-[Unknown]

Wow, thanks for the 411. I'm not bothering to contact my current hosting providers since my client is already going to a new hosting partner. Here's the stats:

DUAL ZEON 3.0HGZ PROC
2GB OF RAM
NETSCREEN 5 FIREWALL - 2000 CONCURRENT SESSIONS

Would your information apply to that setting as well you think?

Also, i'm new to this Charter Membership concept - if I join and install SMF, and it seems to be too slow, etc. - can i have a pretty quick turnaround on possible server settings, like what you just did? Thanks.

[Unknown] · July 22, 2005, 04:32:53 AM

Yes, it probably would. The default configuration of MySQL is not that great for webservers dedicated to a site and a forum, mainly.

Sure. That's part of what Charter Memberships are for. That said, it's more for SMF-specific issues than for server configuration issues. Less of our support team are knowledgable in those matters.

-[Unknown]

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