Sudden forum slow down...

[57hotrodvw]

Hey all,

My SWF forum at http://www.speedshots.net/tvwdra/forum/ [nofollow] has gotten slow over about the past two weeks. It's been up and running fine for a few months now.

I've optimized the tables, checked for errors (none), and upgraded to version 1.0.5, but the problem still occurs.

The intial page load is quite slow, and transitions to boards/topics are slow too.

I haven't changed any admin or server options recently. I get the same behavior w/the default theme. The site is not very large, I have not config'd any of the performance reducing features like "check avatar size...", and no mods are installed.

Forum version: SMF 1.0.5
PHP version: 4.3.10
MySQL version: 4.0.17-standard
Server version: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.8.22 OpenSSL/0.9.7a PHP/4.3.10 mod_perl/1.29 FrontPage/5.0.2.2510
GD version: bundled (2.0.28 compatible)

I've uploaded the status script, which can be found at http://www.speedshots.net/tvwdra/forum/status.php [nofollow]

Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!
--Eric

[Seta Soujiro]

yes, I think that it's some sort of bug.  After I got a certain number of posts on my forum, it immediately slowed down so it took at least 10 seconds to load each page instead of just 1 second.  Maybe just set your server to automatically reboot every five minutes.  That's what I did.es 01

[forsakenlad]

Weird I am administrating a forum with 50K users and I have no slowdowns Tell your host to enable table_cache and set it to a bigger value like 512, it will solve most of the speed issues

[Grudge]

That is slow. I can't believe it can be taking that long to generate those pages though - can you switch on the page generation times so you can see how long SMF is actually taking to generate the page? You haven't changed any settings recently (For example the dreaded "Check avatar sizes every page load") Are you on shared hosting?

[[Unknown]]

yes, I think that it's some sort of bug.  After I got a certain number of posts on my forum, it immediately slowed down so it took at least 10 seconds to load each page instead of just 1 second.  Maybe just set your server to automatically reboot every five minutes.  That's what I did.es 01

Umm, what?  This forum and many other forums have more than 500 posts (which is what that forum has) and none of them are slow.  I'd guess your problems were server related or caused by modifications or themes.  Or were you the one running a server with 32 megs of ram?

Your server isn't well configured, but that's no surprise.

This URL is almost instant:
http://www.speedshots.net/tvwdra/forum/index.php?theme=2

This is very slow:
http://www.speedshots.net/tvwdra/forum/index.php?theme=1

But this is fast:
http://www.speedshots.net/tvwdra/forum/index.php?theme=800

They all show exactly the same thing.  Something strange is going on here for sure.

-[Unknown]

[57hotrodvw]

That is slow. I can't believe it can be taking that long to generate those pages though - can you switch on the page generation times so you can see how long SMF is actually taking to generate the page? You haven't changed any settings recently (For example the dreaded "Check avatar sizes every page load") Are you on shared hosting?

Page geneneration times now enabled. No avatar size check config'd. Yes, I am on a shared svr, but this problem just suddenly started ~2 weeks ago.

...I'd guess your problems were server related or caused by modifications or themes.  Or were you the one running a server with 32 megs of ram?

Your server isn't well configured, but that's no surprise.

...Something strange is going on here for sure.

-[Unknown]

I am on a shared host, but from what I understand, the box is pretty beefy.

Have any config recommendations that I can post on to my host, or other ideas on the strange behavior?

One of the MySQL stats that I wondered about is:

Opened vs. Open tables:
(table_cache)   599.2031 (should be <= 80)

Thanks again,
--Eric

[[Unknown]]

The server looks to be in basically the default configuration.  It's only getting 1.2 queries per second, so even if this is a shared server, most people aren't using MySQL... which probably means your host won't want to dedicate more ram to it.

But, again, it really won't matter for a forum with less than 50,000 posts, not really.  I mean, you'd notice the difference in the page load times, but that's it... and it'd be small.  On that note, I'm getting the following page load times:

Page created in 0.205 seconds with 9 queries. (index)
Page created in 8.797 seconds with 20 queries. (topic)
Page created in 2.452 seconds with 13 queries. (board)
Page created in 0.542 seconds with 11 queries. (index)
Page created in 48.131 seconds with 18 queries. (topic)
Page created in 5.692 seconds with 13 queries. (board)

Of course, even the status.php is taking for ever to load, and it doesn't do much that even could be slow.  This makes me think it's the server.... but I have another idea.

Did you convert from another forum software at any time?  Another possibility is that your indexes could be really messed up.

-[Unknown]

[57hotrodvw]

...Did you convert from another forum software at any time?  Another possibility is that your indexes could be really messed up.

-[Unknown]

This board has been SMF from the start (1.0.3 intially, and upgraded to 1.0.5 a few days ago).

Is there a way to determine if the issue is index related, and if there is a problem with them, is there a good way to repair them?

Thanks,
--Eric

[57hotrodvw]

Up, up, and away...

[57hotrodvw]

Things are still running slowly, for some yet unknown reason.

Any more ideas/suggestions, guys?

[[Unknown]]

Please don't bump.

If you're willing to give me phpMyAdmin access (e.g. by temporarily changing the password in your control panel and in Settings.php) I can take a look.

-[Unknown]

[57hotrodvw]

I contacted my host re:this issue, and they told me that the server was way past due for a reboot.

After the reboot, everything seems to be working correctly again, and I'm not seeing any crazy numbers in the MySQL stats.

Thanks, all!

--Eric