The slow speed of the boards at times is a major problem. Afraidtoask.com apparently runs on a dedicated server, so we are not being slowed down by users of other sites. Though people have commented that our software is old, and though that is an issue in that we cannot get any software support, I doubt that updating the software would make a big difference to speed. I suspect what is really needed is a new server. Could we raise the cost of that?In the meantime, there are some things we can try to reduce the load on the server. One change I made earlier today (US time) is to turn off zlib compression. Zlib compression makes the pages smaller so they download faster, but it loads the server more. I'd like your assessments over the next few days whether turning it off has been overall an improvement or has made things worse.Further changes we could make to make the database smaller:1. We can delete old private messages.2. We can delete old threads.3. We can delete members who haven't been active for some time.I imagine we'll try all of these in turn, and see what effect they have.
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Trying to make the site run faster
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I think we should delete old threads and delete old users who haven't been active.
Also, I tried logging in an hour ago and wasn't able to. -
The server tends to hang regularly, but usually for less than halp a minute. The big problem seems to be that the database program runs out of software resources. It seems like that's something that might be tuned in MySQL. We seem to have an "connections exhausted" problem.
ncreasing the connection limit uses up server resources (from MySQL 5.0 manual)
Do you have a utility that monitors the server's load?
> I think we should delete old threads and delete old users who haven't been active.
I don't think that will have much effect at all, and the idea of throwing out threads seems wrong. It does make housekeeping sense to get rid of dormant users, though.
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I deleted old users this summer. But I don't think users or threads will have much effect on the speed.
We don't have ANY access to the database or server. There are only some settings we can mess with.
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You have a dedicated server that the administrators don't have access to? That seems kind of odd. Can the Doc fix that? As it is now, you can't get at the MySQL concurrent connections dialog?
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We are only administrators within the forum; we are not site admin. The doc presumably has access to the tools, but I suspect he's not an IT person. (Neither am I, really.) We can run SQL commands one at a time within the software, but as I'm not a SQL programmer and have only done extremely basic stuff, I don't feel competent to do that.BTW, I just ran "show variables", and discovered that table_cache is 64 and max_connections is 100.
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The problem I would say is the combined effect of the old hardware and SQL server. Especially if the ser ver's hardware has stayed the same since the site started. One thing that probably bogs it down alot is the number of anonymous users on here all the time...maybe its possible to limit the number of connections allowed for non-registered users?
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I doubt that the problem is with the server, unless it doesn't have enough memory. If that is the case, than the fix is cheap and simple for whomever has access to the server hardware.
I think the real problem is that the parameters that Ineligible mentioned need an adjustment in the upward direction, especially max_connections...not sure about table_cache.
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Just letting you know that the site is running very slow for me today, I don't usually get it this bad.
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It's been horrible all day.
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Can anyone rdp into the server?
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We don't have any server passwords.
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I sure hope that a server that's doing what A2A's server does is not running Windows.Ineligible, if the owner of the site has a dedicated server that you can't get the admin (root) password to, you're rather dead in the water. Does that mean that you can't adjust MySQL parameters?
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No, it's running Unix.It may still be possible to adjust MySQL parameters through the board software if they are not locked. We haven't tried yet.
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It seems like there's not much to lose. If you adjust it and don't like it, you can restore the original settings. I assume you have the ability to force a server reboot when and if needed.
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_Can anyone rdp into the server?
ability to force a server reboot when and if needed. _
Man, you guys are really assuming as "admins" we have a lot of access to the server and website. We have none.... The SQL parameters the Ineigible refers to are just a window to execute SQL line commands through the UBBthreads software. There are also a few fixed SQL commands/links again through the forum.
This is all we get:
DB Management:
SQL command
DB Backup
DB Restore
Optimize tablesI've been tempted to run the optimize tables but the forum has to be closed first. I'm worried that if I were to close the forum I might get locked out with no way in.