AFF pages slow to load

**supershifty** · 01-02-2013, 11:15 PM

I've found that the forum pages are slow to load in the last few days, I mean really slow. When I open the main/login page to AFF it's all good, but when I right click on a link/thread to open up in a new window it turns to pus. Not saying it's an AFF problem at all, could be at well my end.

The AFF pages aren't graphically heavy, so should be almost instantaneous. I've clicked on you tube links within the forum and they stream without a hitch.

Anyone else had the same lately? or should I just man up?

Cheers!

Joshmcmillan · 02-02-2013, 01:33 AM

Yeah I got it starting tonight.

Probably too much traffic on such a great forum ;) I'm sure it will be fixed up soon.

**Mechan1k** · 02-02-2013, 02:23 AM

I have noticed the lag as well here.

**russellw** · 02-02-2013, 09:07 AM

Although the pages aren't graphically heavy they are heavy on database load which is usually where any performance issues on AFF come from.

Having said that, the server loads currently look ok (6.75% CPU) - albeit higher than I'd normally expect to see for early on a Saturday but there are 1,500 users on as well - I will turn on monitoring to gather some information before making a definitive call.

Cheers
Russ

Bam · 02-02-2013, 09:21 AM

Thanks Russ. I've also experienced this problem for about three days...same as Shifty insofar as other sites were OK. There were about 2500 users online when I checked a couple of days ago. It seems to be occurring during peak periods, ie. in the evenings.

Jason[98.EL] · 02-02-2013, 09:40 AM

I have had the same issue

Thought it was my comp playing funny buggers again but it seams not to be the case if others are having the same problem

Jason

**russellw** · 02-02-2013, 09:54 AM

No it is a server issue - a bit more analysis shows that while Apache CPU utilisation is low, mySQL (which runs the database) CPU utilisation is very high with average server loads in the 30's and utilisations up toward 100%.

I'll be doing some mySQL tuning throughout the morning so expect several restarts for mySQL and Apache.

Cheers
Russ

Geez Louise · 02-02-2013, 11:29 AM

I had been having serious issues for the past week and thought it was my end. Turns out some of it was.

The Optus and Telstra networks are having issues at the moment because of the bushfires/Flooding etc. Although I know Russ has said there is a server issue as well. please bare in mind your internet may be a little slower over the coming week while the infrastructure gets fixed by your provider.

Cheers
Col

**Mechan1k** · 02-02-2013, 08:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Geez Louise

I had been having serious issues for the past week and thought it was my end. Turns out some of it was.

The Optus and Telstra networks are having issues at the moment because of the bushfires/Flooding etc. Although I know Russ has said there is a server issue as well. please bare in mind your internet may be a little slower over the coming week while the infrastructure gets fixed by your provider.

Cheers
Col

To add to this .... there are still issues with in the QLD region ... even though Telstra has temporarily fixed a couple of IOFs heading to Northern QLD for the timebeing. Also there are a number of DC's in the Brissy Metro area still running on diesel due to lack of MAINS Power as well.

Some regions though still have no comms.

**supershifty** · 02-02-2013, 04:18 PM

The pages are flying for me at the moment - it's all good!

Thanks Russell!

**russellw** · 02-02-2013, 05:45 PM

The server loads were fluctuating between the 30's and 40's - ideally they should be below 5 and they are currently running between 4 and 5 after some tuning work. As there are currently 1,760 user on-line that's more than acceptable with Apache load also down to about 4.45%.

MySQL CPU utilisation is now down in the 40% bracket and anything under 80% average is fine.

There's a couple more things I will do tomorrow after the SQL server has been running for 12 hours but that's a good start.

Cheers
Russ

Jason[98.EL] · 02-02-2013, 05:49 PM

thanks Russ

The pages are flying at the moment so job well done

Jason

**russellw** · 02-02-2013, 07:14 PM

Sorry about the extra couple of restarts but I needed to change something else.

Cheers
Russ

foxtrot3 · 02-02-2013, 08:15 PM

Hi. Definitely rapid load again now. Have you changed the "new posts" search back to the old way? Its hard to tell as I cleared my history to see if that speeded things up. Cheers MD

**russellw** · 02-02-2013, 09:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by foxtrot3

Hi. Definitely rapid load again now. Have you changed the "new posts" search back to the old way? Its hard to tell as I cleared my history to see if that speeded things up. Cheers MD

I have - one of the things that adds load to the database is the number of reads and writes required to maintain that data compared to the cookie based method previously used.

Despite having almost 2,000 users on currently, server loads are still under 5, have only peaked at 7.5 and Apache load is only:

CPU Usage: u1664.36 s19.42 cu4.28 cs0 - 2.56% CPU load31 requests/sec - 0.5 MB/second - 18.1 kB/request75 requests currently being processed, 0 idle workersCheers
Russ

99AUXR · 02-02-2013, 10:23 PM

Yea last week has been pretty slow thought it was just my agricultural internet. . . . .Much better now though.

**russellw** · 03-02-2013, 09:54 AM

I'll be doing a SQL table optimise this morning as well as some re-indexing so things may be slow and the server may be unavailable for short periods (~20 seconds).

Cheers
Russ

**russellw** · 03-02-2013, 09:55 AM

I'll be doing a SQL table optimise this morning as well as some re-indexing so things may be slow and the server may be unavailable for short periods (~20 seconds).

Cheers
Russ

jmac · 03-02-2013, 10:37 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by russellw

I'll be doing a SQL table optimise this morning as well as some re-indexing so things may be slow and the server may be unavailable for short periods (~20 seconds).

Cheers
Russ

Hey Russ I have some scripts that help with the mysql and Apache tuning process if you are interested pm me ;-)

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

XR6T0Y · 03-02-2013, 01:41 PM

Has anyone been getting the page coming up (after trying to load into a thread) saying Database error?

Jason[98.EL] · 03-02-2013, 02:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by XR6T0Y

Has anyone been getting the page coming up (after trying to load into a thread) saying Database error?

I would guess that it is part of the work russ is doing behind the scenes

Jason

**russellw** · 03-02-2013, 04:10 PM

Quite correct - whenever I restart mySQL you'll get a db error as it's obviously not available for the time it takes to restart.

Cheers
Russ

Bam · 03-02-2013, 09:51 PM

Even the home page was slow to load tonight. 2300 users online at 2150 hours.

99AUXR · 03-02-2013, 10:14 PM

Quote:

2321 (746 members and 1575 guests)

Its the Guests. Ban them, Ban them all

**Silver Ghia** · 04-02-2013, 02:11 PM

Perhaps the high number of guests is because there are a number of forums that were previously private, are now available for guests to open? Unsure when these became open for guests to read but perhaps this could be a reason for the problem?

BionicXR6 · 04-02-2013, 03:13 PM

There is also an issue with the forum where one is not able to un subscribe from threads via the drop down menu under thread tools. This is also causing an issue with still listing read subscribed threads in the user's control panel.

stevz · 08-02-2013, 10:26 PM

The forum has been painfully slow for me tonight..

Bam · 03-03-2013, 05:46 PM

Hate to say it but it's doing it again. As at the time of this post, the home page took about 30 secs to load and the User CP hadn't finished loading after 2 mins. Approx 2300 users online. Cross-checked other sites and they were OK, hence it's not my ISP.

I had a similar problem during peak hours yesterday. Off-peak hours (eg. 0600) were OK.

**russellw** · 03-03-2013, 07:26 PM

It's not load related as I've resolved those issues however we are clearing the SQL cache every couple of hours and that will result in long queries for a few minutes while the cache rebuilds.

However, that is the lesser of evils as what was happening was that the system would run low on memory when getting a lot of queries and then it starts doing what are known as low memory prunes of the cache.

In simple terms, these are a bad thing as they cause all the memory addresses used by the query cache to be rebuilt and performance suffers - flushing the cache every couple of hours allows the cache to rebuild gracefully and has less of a performance impact.

We will also be doubling the primary memory in the server so that some of those thresholds can be raised in order to avoid this issue - or at least flush the cache less often.

When I first started the tuning exercise the low memory prunes were going up every hour so that by the early evening they were in the half million bracket whereas now they are in the low thousands and not increasing until late at night.

Cheers
Russ

**MercurySilver** · 09-03-2013, 02:32 PM

very slow for me today