Forum slow page creation

[debiwebi]

I just noticed something odd, at least odd to me. I just saved a post in my forum and it took well over a minute for the page to be saved, but the page creation note says 13.936 seconds with 18 queries. I've seen it do this a few times over the past couple of days, taking a minute or more to load a page and then the report says it was seconds. I don't understand the discrepancy. I don't understand much these days at all...

[Steve]

I just noticed something odd, at least odd to me. I just saved a post in my forum and it took well over a minute for the page to be saved, but the page creation note says 13.936 seconds with 18 queries. I've seen it do this a few times over the past couple of days, taking a minute or more to load a page and then the report says it was seconds. I don't understand the discrepancy. I don't understand much these days at all...

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=531937.msg3778926#msg3778926

[debiwebi]

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=531937.msg3778926#msg3778926

Thank you Steve for the link for an explanation. It was very interesting to read the whole topic too, I guess I'm in good company. My site is still lagging but sometimes it's faster than others. Evenings are slower, probably when all the sites sharing the same server are more active and clogging up the ethers.

[margarett]

I checked your files and, as expected, there is *nothing* suggesting a hack of any sorts. You do have some MODs installed which *might* cause an additional load but *NOT* for 2-5 users online at once.

So as expected, that's the usual GD speech

Good luck

[debiwebi]

I checked your files and, as expected, there is *nothing* suggesting a hack of any sorts.
Good luck

Okay, thanks very much!

[debiwebi]

What fixed the problem? I have no idea. But after 5 days of timeouts, notifications about not connecting to the database, excruciatingly long page creation times (I'm talking minutes here), hours on the phone and these errors repeated ad nauseum in the error log:

[Sat Aug 08 11:37:08 2015] [10513500] [fcgid:warn] [client xxx etc] mod_fcgid: read data timeout in 120 seconds
[Sat Aug 08 11:37:08 2015] [10513500] [core:error] [client xxx etc] End of script output before headers: index.php

my forum is back to it's original speedy self. Suddenly no more errors in the log.

The only thing I did was start blocking a huge amount of referrer spam (floating-share-buttons.com/referral; success-seo.com; buttons-for-website.com etc.) which I realized, from my analytics, were visiting the 5 subdomains I have. Two of the sites are Wordpress, one SMF.

I still have two questions, hopefully someone can answer them. Please humor me.

First, this page recently came to my attention:
http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/SMF2.0:Requirements_and_recommendations

It just says SMF2.0 in the url and throughout the page. Can I assume it's meant to encompass 2.0.* (I'm running 2.0.10)? I was looking at "Basic Server Requirements/The following must be changed in the php.ini file:" and there are a few things on the list that are NOT in my file. Would you recommend I add/change them now, after having run the forum for 7+ months so far with only the recent problem?

Second, I've noticed quite often, and especially when I was having the slow load problem, that my browser status would get stuck on "waiting for ajax.gooleapis.com." I've wanted to address that for a while but never had the time. I see in the source code of my pages (partial):

Code Select Expand

<script type="text/javascript">window.jQuery || document.write(unescape('%3Cscript src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.11.2/jquery.min.js"%3E%3C/script%3E'))</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-migrate-1.2.1.js"></script>


and tracked it down Subs-QuickSpoiler.php

Is there any way for me to find out, if the problem returns, what script a server is getting stuck on? I just wonder if a third party server issue could be/could be slowing load times. I'm new to how all of this works.

BTW, I have emailed the last tech support person at my hosting company asking if he has any clue if something was done on their end to fix the problem. If I get an answer, I'll update this one last time. I won't hold my breath.

[LiroyvH]

The fcgi time-out indicates that your script is taking far too long to complete, so the server kills the child process.
Has the host ever checked what the io load is on the server, eg what the iowait values are?

You could potentially enable debug mode, but if nothing is presented on your screen (fcgi timeout will probably return a 500 error) that'll be a bit annoying.

[Steve]

At least I can answer one question:

It just says SMF2.0 in the url and throughout the page. Can I assume it's meant to encompass 2.0.* (I'm running 2.0.10)?

Yes. (keep in mind that certain versions have different requirements as explained at the link)

[debiwebi]

The fcgi time-out indicates that your script is taking far too long to complete, so the server kills the child process.
Has the host ever checked what the io load is on the server, eg what the iowait values are?

You could potentially enable debug mode, but if nothing is presented on your screen (fcgi timeout will probably return a 500 error) that'll be a bit annoying.

I did get a few 500 errors here and there.
I don't know if the host checked the io load on the server, it's something I'm not familiar with (dbs are new to me) and they never said. The last one I talked with just said one of the scripts was taking too long to complete but couldn't say which one. Gri was going to have me start disabling a couple of mods that had altered the index.php (Simple AV Emb and then later Drafts) but then things straightened out so there was no need. But then it made me wonder if googleapis was the problem...

[debiwebi]

At least I can answer one question:

It just says SMF2.0 in the url and throughout the page. Can I assume it's meant to encompass 2.0.* (I'm running 2.0.10)?

Yes. (keep in mind that certain versions have different requirements as explained at the link)

Thanks Steve! I still don't know if I should both to make the changes or not. I suppose I can do it and if anything goes wrong, I can revert back.