A request to the forum moderators…forum speed

[EM-0785]

Originally Posted by Brent Mills

Guys...I am sorry...I have worked on this for many hours over the last week and a half and have others who have been digging in too.....I am not certain what is going on yet as other sites on this server are running fine.

Please also note fellas, and I'm not looking for sympathy, but I have, along with the moderators put in thousands of hours over the last ~18 years. Please bare with me. I do apologize for the inconvenience. I will get it resolved.

I have another server which I am working on deploying, but as some of you know, as the years pass, new OS, different hardware, various versions of PHP/MySQL and other software decide not to play nicely, so it's not as simple as just copying everything over to the new server and pressing go. Lots of debugging there to get everything working too. So, I am trying to fix things in the short term on the current server, because something got buggered up, but nothing changed by me, so debugging that, when the software is the same for other sites that are working, is not proving easy.

I am trying...Nothing has been more important to me over the years than to keep you all connected. I'm sorry.

Brent,

The IT guy I’d pm’d a name/number on a couple months back on the prior IT issue is still available (locally) and at the ready if you’d like to consider using him at some point. He had explained to me early into that prior site issue what he thought was going on (with PHP/Sql). It appears that ended up being what you found over time with others.

In a 30 second conversation with him today I advised him of the current issue. He believes the current slowness issue may well be permission or configuration issues. It sounds like it is getting an error that it then times out for, for like 20-30 seconds, then at the end of the time out period, it resolves to let it through.

Particularly if all sites are on the same server (and not virtually separated for example), he feels it’s likely something like above, as it’s apparently not affecting other sites. Also if that is the case, it’s likely not a hardware issues, which would likely affect all sites. Not to say hardware may not need upgrading for other reasons, etc.

At any rate, maybe something to look into, or even contact him. You could find that he offers best value techniques for streamlined upgrade/migration methods in a sound/secure manner and could possibly advise on employing a solution that may better survive ongoing, given the myriad of changes in the IT environment(s) these days.

You may well be satisfied with current advisors, I know sometimes doesn’t get resolved overnight. However, his solutions/mind on small business issues, including websites, have often been refreshingly valuable and cost effective.

Just trying to offer anything that might help...that's about all I can think of.

Oh, one more thing actually...the money side. I'd posed a question to Jamo on the lifetime membership as I wanted be become a supporter. He was going to verify with you, that was fairly recently, and I'm sure you've been tied up with things. However, my question is, is the $500 a one time lifetime membership (I strongly assume), or is it a true supercontributor commitment of $500/yr (which I wouldn't be interest in at this time)? Once I get that clarified, my path to signing up for a contributor level will be sped!

Brent

[onefastmustang]

This is not the type of result you would get from a permissions issue. That would tend to be a lot more catastrophic and result in a 500 code. None of the inspections of the resulting responses has yielded that. There are a handful of 404's, mostly 200s and 302's. The 404's should be fixed as they can cause a slight slow down on web load but definitely not what we are witnessing today. 404's tend to only cause sub 1 second pauses if even that high.

[xb-60]

Originally Posted by EM-0785

...my question is, is the $500 a one time lifetime membership (I strongly assume), or is it a true supercontributor commitment of $500/yr...

It's $500 for 25 years

Anybody who visits here regularly and gets information from the forum should at least think about a base-level contribution ($30/year) to help Brent keep ClubCobra ticking over.
edit: You also get 200MB storage in your gallery, which is handy with PhotoBucket having taken his bat and gone home

Where else do you have access to so much Cobra information and advice?


Cheers,
Glen

[DanEC]

I think my computer is developing an internal awareness or AI of the forum issues. It's gotten to when I click on my favorites bar icon the little windows wheel only spins a couple seconds and quits - like it's saying "There's just no use. Why waste my time." I have to right click on my mouse pad and click on Open to get it to make a real effort to connect to the site.

[olddog]

To those who think a you can buy a server for peanuts, like a you can a PC, here is my real world experience.

In 2007, I put in a Dell high availability server, for a data base to collect process control history. This is actually two physical servers that software ties them together to look like one server. It's called a Cluster. So to all the devices sending information to the data server, they see one server. Inside the cluster there are two servers, one doing the work the other in standby, ready to take over, if the primary fails, thus high availability

Server Operating System Software is licensed and priced based on what it is going to do. The word used to measure the work escapes me at the moment. My operating system licence was $3000 and it can go over $10000, depending on what you are doing.

Then you need to buy a Sequel Server License if you want a data base to store information, and you need a drive array that contains pairs of drives, so that one drive failure will not loose data.

Bottom line my little project was over $20,000. It is now 10 years old. The operating system is so obsolete, it is no longer supported and a vulnerability risk the size of the ice burg that sank the Titanic. The whole server should have been replaced 3 yrs ago. So if you do the math, on average, it costs about $3000 per year to run my server correctly, if nothing ever failed (that never happens).

My application is a tiny spec compared to say a Bank or other large corporation. Maybe Brent's Server is a bit smaller, maybe not.

[onefastmustang]

We buy a lot of servers.. We very religiously replace them when they are 3-5 years old. With 300+ servers in our cage you can tell we stay busy replacing them. The old servers either get demoted from production to staging/development and in some slim cases they just get donated to the local school system or some other charity. But I easily spend 500k a year on replacement servers and assorted accessories such as Fiber HBA's. None of our servers have hard drives in them to cut down on the need to service them. All of them boot across a fiber SAN off of the central 3par storage, even the linux servers which for a long time were problematic when booting from SAN. I had to compile a special kernel so they could handle the multipath properly. Isn't technology fun.

[boxhead]

Originally Posted by onefastmustang

This is not the type of result you would get from a permissions issue. That would tend to be a lot more catastrophic and result in a 500 code. None of the inspections of the resulting responses has yielded that. There are a handful of 404's, mostly 200s and 302's. The 404's should be fixed as they can cause a slight slow down on web load but definitely not what we are witnessing today. 404's tend to only cause sub 1 second pauses if even that high.

I am hopeless when it comes to IT stuff.
But your mention of a "500 error" pricked my attention, I just tried to upload some pics into my gallery, and it came up with a 500 error.
Not sure what it means, so I just gave up.