FAO: Web admin

[eek]

And how do you know it has go to do with databases, troll?

It could be anything. One has to analyze dmesg, log files, top, memory leaking, check cron jobs failures, check security updates, all sort of things that are too difficult for you to understand.

And yes, a different OS/distro can make the difference. Packages are built in different ways by different distros. Some distributions maintain a more conservative approach and complile packages with fewer dependencies.

Firstly because I know how the actual forum software works and hence where possible speed issues could be occurring / improvements made....

Then you made a statement to change operating systems without even knowing how the underlining software works and without thinking through the consequences of your (total red herring) solution. Heck you don't even know the underline system architecture........

You highlight everything that is wrong with some IP professionals. They give recommendations without fully knowing the system creating bigger messes for lucky contractors to spend renewals upon renewals fixing...

[petergriffin]

Technical is still a Professional forum. Throwing the word Troll around in what should be a debate is frowned on. Post your stuff in General if that's what you want to do.

I get your point but I see a bit of double standards here.

[eek]

I get your point but I see a bit of double standards here.

Where... I'm calling you what you are - With facts and quotes to prove you don't know what you are talking about.

You just randomly called me a troll with no evidence to back up the fact. (Mind you the lack of evidence is clear in all your posts so I suppose we shouldn't expect any better from you).

[administrator]

I ping the site and the latency is ok, but it takes ages to load the page, and that's the only site that behaves so, mainly in the evening. Maybe you have a lot of cron jobs after 8 pm or it is not tuned properly.


I know the guys at Bytemark, top man is a Ubuntu/Debian developer so he is a bit biased. What to use? I have fallen in love with the *bsd's, but because Bytemark use kvm, you're limited to Linux.

You could move to Debian stable, the transition from Ubuntu wouldn't be painful. Better would be Slackware or Gentoo.

Never had the problem with the site loading slowly here, at any time of day. I do backups via cron but these are at more like one or two in the morning so shouldn't affect evening browsing of the site. So not sure why you are getting such a slow-down at that time, especially if you aren't seeing the same with other sites but I am not sure that the OS or Apache are the problem.

Yes, have been with Bytemark for six or seven years and that is when I started using Ubuntu (Dapper Drake I think it was when I moved over) and surely if BM are happy running it then they can't see it as being a problem, and I am confident that they are the experts in this case so happy to trust them!

I tried Debian around the same time and did not get on with it whereas Ubuntu really is a breeze and that is why I use it. I really don't want to spend a lot if time learning the foibles of another OS now, I host quite a bit more than just CUK - I run 7 servers with Bytemark at present and the time to change all of those over just wouldn't be worth it for me. I also run quite a few little VMs with other providers, again all using Ubuntu, but have been playing with nginx and lighttpd as well and really see no need to change.

I have used RedHat, Fedora, CentOS, FreeBSD, Suse and Debian as well as Ubuntu so not like I haven't tried other solutions over the years. Ubuntu just works for me at this moment in time and happy to continue using it for now. As I said, I am on here every evening around the times you mention as well and haven't noticed any slow-down, if I had then I would have checked it out and I am sure others here would have been quick to tell me

So not sure where to go with this one. If you notice the site is slow try doing a trace to the server IP and see if any hops there are slow. I have checked out the server stats - see below, and this is monitoring Apache. Doesn't look to be a slow down there apart from a blip around 10pm.

[administrator]

Easy lads! No need for handbags

Hopefully my post will give PG some stats to show that Apache isn't the likely answer for him seeing site slowdown. I do agree with eek though that moving the software architecture (PHP scripts and MySQL DB) to a new OS isn't likely to make much of a difference. You may squeeze a few fractions of a second off in processing time but that is likely to be all. If there was a significant performance issue with the site though I would be looking, like PG said, at memory, proc and disk usage and then to look at optimising DB etc before I looked at OS. As to be honest if the site was struggling that much then I would just look to get a faster server if I couldn't squeeze performance anywhere else. The time taken to learn a new OS could be better spent elsewhere and another £50 a month for more RAM / faster disk / faster proc would be less to spend than a week learning how to best set up a new OS!

[petergriffin]

Is everything ok with dmesg and the Apache and *sql logs?

Apache or mysql might run from a separate partition and that could be (partially) corrupted.

At first I thought it was me because I'm abroad but even in the UK I had problems posting, after clicking the send button. It might freeze for 40-45 secs and then timeout. But then, if it's only me reporting this problem, it might well be a problem on my side of the connection.

[eek]

Is everything ok with dmesg and the Apache and *sql logs?

Apache or mysql might run from a separate partition and that could be (partially) corrupted.

At first I thought it was me because I'm abroad but even in the UK I had problems posting, after clicking the send button. It might freeze for 40-45 secs and then timeout. But then, if it's only me reporting this problem, it might well be a problem on my side of the connection.

40-45seconds isn't a web server issue. That is a networking issue......

Run fiddler or developer tools on the browser and see what the network tab tells you.

[DirtyDog]

Never had the problem with the site loading slowly here, at any time of day.

So you'll be re-opening TPD then?

[administrator]

The clue is in

I ping the site and the latency is ok, but it takes ages to load the page, and that's the only site that behaves so, mainly in the evening.

Then you have to look at how the software works (lots of queries some of which are cached for a few seconds when lots of people are using the site).

Hence page speed may be slower at night because there are less cached queries being used so more calls to the database.....

Personally as its 1 person complaining rather than a lot of people I doubt there is much to worry about.....

Yeah I did take note of that line but as the ping (latency) is not Apache then looking at the Apache monitoring graph it shows no slow down in Apache.

Appreciate the caching but would also have thought that when there are less people on the site at night then the load on the DB will be a heck of a lot lower so it shouldn't take as long to answer.

Agree on volume of people reporting it being a good indicator of local as opposed to whole of internet seeing the same problem.

Is everything ok with dmesg and the Apache and *sql logs?

Apache or mysql might run from a separate partition and that could be (partially) corrupted.

At first I thought it was me because I'm abroad but even in the UK I had problems posting, after clicking the send button. It might freeze for 40-45 secs and then timeout. But then, if it's only me reporting this problem, it might well be a problem on my side of the connection.

Just a single partition on the machine so corruption there isn't likely to be the problem. Yeah dmesg all OK and nothing untoward in any other logs.

Will try some test posts tonight, feel free to PM me or post here when you are noticing a delay in posting replies and I will check some more bits out.

[administrator]

So you'll be re-opening TPD then?

I was thinking about that the other day! It might be worth a fiddle...