Why is the site always slow?

The site has been horrible for the last hour or so. This page took about six minutes to load so that I could post this.
 
There was some internet outage:

Here is the message that has just been posted:
***************
It appears that there is a problem on the link between Level3 and Colo4Dallas. Here is a copy of the reply received from them:

*********
We experiencing network issues at this time, we will provide an update as soon
as information becomes available.
*********

This thread will be updated as soon as any additional status notification will be received from Colo4Dallas.
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An FIB TCAM exhaustion issue was experienced this morning on the Premium Network. The initial incident resulted in a small number of routes entering a software-switched state. However, as the morning went on, this issue cascaded and required rolling reboots of our border routers.

At this time, the issue has been resolved.
Click to expand...
 
My FIB TCAM was feeling exhausted this morning too after clinking refresh a few dozen times. :)
 
The site seems to be quicker than normal for me right now. Maybe something just happened and it's done?
 
The slowdowns come and go. It was fast and then slowed again a couple of minutes ago. I don't think there is anything wrong with my system because other sites are loading quickly at the same times. Sorry if it sounds like I'm complaining.
 
No, you're not complaining. I need to find a cheaper host that doesn't have all these issues. As it is, I don't really want to pay for hosting any more. I don't have the time to figure this stuff out.
 
Handruin said:
No, you're not complaining. I need to find a cheaper host that doesn't have all these issues. As it is, I don't really want to pay for hosting any more. I don't have the time to figure this stuff out.
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Is this simply an indirect way of passing the hat to pay for the site? Is it that you are not interested in the job any longer and want someone else to take over?
 
BingBangBop said:
Is this simply an indirect way of passing the hat to pay for the site? Is it that you are not interested in the job any longer and want someone else to take over?
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It was a complicated statement. I don't have the will/time to track down why this host is having performance issues at odd hours, nor do I have the time to try a bunch of other hosting service to figure out which ones would be better. In part I'm not feeling like the money spent on this current host is worth it any more. I'm not indirectly asking anyone to pay for the site, but I've also recently (in the past few months) been debating not wanting to run/manage this site any more.
 
Oh that is terrible. First the MBF now this. :cry: Anything that I can do in the next months?
 
Well, I'm sure many here would be happy to contribute to keep the place alive (as many have in the past). I would volunteer my services to keep the place running, but I do not have the necessary skills. Perhaps additional steps could be taken to reduce the workload?
 
LunarMist said:
Oh that is terrible. First the MBF now this. :cry: Anything that I can do in the next months?
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There is nothing terrible happening. I wouldn't just turn the site off without at least making efforts to offering it to someone else withing the community to continue. That would be a huge dick move. I haven't made up my mind one way or another, I was just speaking out loud. There's nothing to worry about at the moment.
 
We can start discussing ways to make it easier for Doug and faster for all of us.

Require registration to start with an e-mail to a mod?
Colo a dedicated server?

I'm assuming the bulk of the admin duties are dealing with SPAMers?
This place is important to me. I would happily send $10-25/mo to make it better, and could donate a rather beastly machine for the purpose.
 
ddrueding said:
We can start discussing ways to make it easier for Doug and faster for all of us.

Require registration to start with an e-mail to a mod?
Colo a dedicated server?

I'm assuming the bulk of the admin duties are dealing with SPAMers?
This place is important to me. I would happily send $10-25/mo to make it better, and could donate a rather beastly machine for the purpose.
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I looked into colocation many times but the cost of the service was the issue, not the hardware, though I do appreciate the offer to donate a beastly machine. If we can find a reasonable colocation area, maybe we can build a dedicated machine through donations or something?

Spammers are an issue and I've been trying to find better ways to reduce them. There are improvements that can be made. I spent a few hours last Saturday troubleshooting some code, but I made no changes or progress yet. I have a list of things I need to change/implement to make it a little better.

This topic should move to its own thread for better visibility.
 
Handruin said:
spent a few hours last Saturday troubleshooting some code, but I made no changes or progress yet. I have a list of things I need to change/implement to make it a little better.
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If you want help I have a decent amount of PHP development experience (though Java is much preferred for me).
 
timwhit said:
If you want help I have a decent amount of PHP development experience (though Java is much preferred for me).
Click to expand...

Thanks timwhit, I'll let you know. The problem is more related to figuring out the vbulletin environment more-so than php specifically. I haven't spent enough time with their plugin system yet to call it quits. The forum doesn't run anything which contains java, so there's nothing to work on there.

Which leads me to my next issue. Due to some fiasco with vbulletin changing owners and a change in their licensing structure, I've not upgraded anything in a while. Since they've migrated to version 4.x, they've cut off support and updates to 3.8 owners unless if we buy a license for 4.x. I don't feel the need to spend several hundred dollars to upgrade to the latest version because we don't really need any of the new features and changes.

Which leaves me at a loss on how to update and advance. One alternative would be to move over to an open source forum software that has continued development and support. I would like to change as little as possible because I know people don't like change. I also don't want to change just for the sake of changing, but we should be getting updates to software as they find issues.

Another complication is I really like the plug in I'm using right now for spam management. They even have updates but they require vbulletin 4.x which puts me out of luck unless I take the code and hack it to work with this current version.
 
I've tried to update a few items and I also made some changes to the database server to make use of more memory. I hope it'll help the performance a bit.
 
I've done some admin work with phpBB3. It has a large community of developers and many free plugins. I bet there are even vBulletin to phpBB3 migration scripts out there.
 
I'm going to setup a demo of phpbb3 and try importing our database. The area where I would need to research and possibly receive help with is the registration system.

Upon registration of new accounts I would want the username, IP address, and email checked against an API to see if they exist in the StopForumSpam database. I understand the code which does this now in vbulletin, but I'd need it to do the same in phpbb3.
 
I just wanted to post and say I appreciate all the work / time / effort / money Doug has put into the forum and will help out in any way I can.
 
time said:
Yep. At least one person on the second last page of that thread successfully converted from VB3.82 to phpBB3. HTH.
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I actually have been running that all morning to test an import. :-) Sadly it failed with this error that i need to track down.


Code: 
General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Out of range value adjusted for column 'poll_option_id' at row 1 [1264]

SQL

insert into phpbb_poll_options (poll_option_id,topic_id,poll_option_text,poll_option_total) values(128,6666,'Yes',9)

BACKTRACE

FILE: includes/db/mysqli.php
LINE: 163
CALL: dbal->sql_error()

FILE: install/convertors/functions_vb30.php
LINE: 56
CALL: dbal_mysqli->sql_query()

FILE: install/install_convert.php(1654) : eval()'d code
LINE: 2
CALL: vb_import_polloption()

FILE: install/install_convert.php
LINE: 1654
CALL: eval()

FILE: install/install_convert.php
LINE: 799
CALL: install_convert->jump()

FILE: install/install_convert.php
LINE: 203
CALL: install_convert->convert_data()

FILE: install/index.php
LINE: 409
CALL: install_convert->main()

FILE: install/index.php
LINE: 286
CALL: module->load()
 
Doug, vBulletin upgrade pricing is $175 + $80/year for email support.

I'm guessing that you've become increasingly unhappy about the product or the company over time?
 
time said:
Doug, vBulletin upgrade pricing is $175 + $80/year for email support.

I'm guessing that you've become increasingly unhappy about the product or the company over time?
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I'm actually happy with the forum we're using right now. I didn't like the events that unfolded when they sold the company. The move to vbulletin 4.0 (at that time) wasn't much of an upgrade for what they were charging and then they required the larger upgrade price in order to even get the older forum updates. For me to even get patches and updates to 3.8.x (which is where we are), I'd have to pay the full upgrade. I'm happy to consider the latest version of 4.1.x but I was making a guess people would hate how it looks.
 
time said:
Casting problem?
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I don't think it was a casting issue. I looked in the DB and that phpbb3 field is set to tinyint(4) and the value the converter tried inserting was '128,6666'. I'll need to see why the value is so high or maybe something was parsed incorrectly.
 
I'm wrong, the poll_option_id value was within the correct range.

(poll_option_id,topic_id,poll_option_text,poll_option_total) values(128,6666,'Yes',9)
 
I tried to manually add the value into the database and I do get an error:

1 row(s) inserted.
Warning: #1264 Out of range value adjusted for column 'poll_option_id' at row 1

it is out of range:
tinyint allows for a value between -128 and 127 when signed.
 
If there is anything we can do to help, please let us know.

What are the hardware requirements for a web site server?
 
i.e. you were inadvertently trying to cast a SmallInt as a TinyInt.

Out of curiosity, is the value 128 because it's part of a sequence for all possible poll options in the data? Cause on the face of it PhpBB is using a compound key of topic_id + poll_option_id instead. I guess it shouldn't matter because the key will still be unique.
 
Bozo said:
If there is anything we can do to help, please let us know.

What are the hardware requirements for a web site server?
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Thanks Bozo. The requirements are rather minimal. One to two CPUs (2-3GHz), 512MB-1GB memory and 30-100GB of disk space (RAID 1 preferred) and less than 100GB transfer per month.
 
time said:
i.e. you were inadvertently trying to cast a SmallInt as a TinyInt.

Out of curiosity, is the value 128 because it's part of a sequence for all possible poll options in the data? Cause on the face of it PhpBB is using a compound key of topic_id + poll_option_id instead. I guess it shouldn't matter because the key will still be unique.
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I haven't looked into what it's actually for, but the number range seems rather small to me. I was able to complete the conversion and things seem to be working. If you want to check it out, it's here.
 
Bozo said:
What are the hardware requirements for a web site server?
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It really isn't practical or affordable for us to use our own hardware. Rack space at an ISP ain't cheap and they may not allow anyone onsite to maintain the hardware.
 
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