Intermittent issues

Hi All,

It seems that we're having some intermittent issues with the access to the database behind the website. For me this has presented itself as a screen showing a vBulletin error message. Looking into this as best I can (I'm in a field in Yorkshire at the moment) it seems that the database is being swamped with connections and is simply refusing additional connections above a certain number. This is, in itself, normal except that the number of connections at which this happens should be way above the normal number of connections which the database should be seeing at any single point in time.

The fact that I can post this means that all is not lost (so no need to act like Corporal Jones just yet), I'll be home in the next few days and have a more detailed look into things.

Regards,
Jeff
(Web thingie)

Hi Jeff (chief Web Thingie) - I havent experienced any issues so maybe not such a big problem ?

Possibly not .. but still worth looking into.

I tend to have a quick look to see who might be online whenever I log on, and there always seem to be a ton of "guests" - right now there are 10 members and 237 guests. OK, so some will be members who want a quick peek at something and can't be bothered logging in, but 237...??
Not saying we should limit them - we've got nothing to hide (quick tidy up of incriminating evidence...) and hopefully some will become full members (and then we can spend their subs on beer). Be interesting to know what the figures are for max users vs. how many are on when the DB throws a wobbly.

Oh, and, er, Hello, Guest-Type Peeps :)

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Normb666

Be interesting to know what the figures are for max users vs. how many are on when the DB throws a wobbly.

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The max we have had on is shown on the front page at the bottom and currently stands at:
Most users ever online was 522, 02-02-2017 at 08:06.

If you try to login as a guest you wont see much other than what your missing!!

Ahhh, but then you either wouldn't be missing it cos you could see it, or you couldn't see it and wouldn't know anyway....sheesh, I really make my head hurt sometimes :(

You see the titles and the thread headers but some sneaky bugger hide the rest of the thread!!!

Hi All,

An advanced warning (though not that advanced)...

I'm home and having looked into the database. It seems that we've only got 25 MBytes free space left before everything grinds to a halt. It's sort of that serious.

The set up with the hosting providers limits the database to 1024 MBytes and we're pretty close to it already. This might be the root cause behind some of the issues that I see occasionally, it also may not be.

Anyway .. I am aware of the situation and am looking into options. What ever happens there will probably need to be some down time in the next few days/weeks once I have a plan of how address this issue.

PS: Now is the time to get Corporal Jones out..

oh dear ! I'll put my tin helmet on (Mr Mainwaring)

Kinell, it's just like being back at work...as a SAN and Storage Array Administrator I get this from our DBAs all the time, "we're nearly out of space, can we have 500GB extra storage or the XYZ system will collapse". Unfortunately I can't help out here as I think it might be noticed if an unknown server suddenly appeared in one of the data centres and I asked one of the Installations guys to connect it to the SAN...

A thought though, 1GB doesn't seem much for a database?? Hopefully extending it'll not cost too much!

Good work tho Jeff, keep us all posted, or else "we're doomed!" (Scottish accent) :)

The limit is a purely arbitrary one which is applied to any databases they host on behalf of their customers. It's not a limit of the database itself, most probably just some form of quota system. But it looks (at an initial pass) like they're fairly inflexible about it; we can have as many 1 GB databases as we like, but (so far) there's no mention yet of anything larger. Using a different database doesn't win you anything.

I'm currently running up a sand pit environment at home so I can restore the backup I made when I got home and have a play with it, see what the options are.

Trouble is, it's been a while since I had to do any of this, and some of the neurons are rusty and need some oil.... :rolleyes:

Hi All,

Hopefully the problem has been solved. Certainly a *huge* amount of space has been recovered from the database such that rather than being 95+% full it's now only 25% full.

"So what on earth have you thrown away Jeff? Can there be anything left?"

It seems that the language translation facility was being something of a hog and was permanently keeping translations of pages in perpetuity. In effect what should have been a caching facility was archiving all its work in many, many languages, forever. Having found out what was actually using up all the space (not as simple as it ought to have been) there was just the task of disillusioning that part of the software and making it play more sensibly.

Anyway, vBET options located, cache cleaning enabled (over night), ét voila, space recovered.

Pages should still be translated on demand, that facility hasn't been touched. The translated pages should be cached for 90 days, after which they should (presumably if not accessed again) be deleted during an over-night purge. If required again they can be re-translated and cached again.

Visually and content wise this shouldn't have had any impact on the site. If somebody sees something not right let me know. I did backup everything yesterday afternoon prior to the clean up, just to be safe.

Jeff.

.... having said the above, this shouldn't have had any impact on why I was seeing the DB refusing connections. I'll keep a watch on things from the side lines for a while.

Brilliant, thanks Jeff.

Tin helmet removed - well done that man !

Good 'un Jeff, - now you've had a practice and saved us all from ourselves, you can zoom off and Save the World. Get yerself some of those red over-the-tights underpants and send the bill to the Club Treasurer.

i have not been able to get the member map for weeks
steve

I'll have a look about, see what I can see...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by hollytree

i have not been able to get the member map for weeks
steve

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Edit/

... and I can not see anything. The surrounding vBulletin stuff is there, but where the map stuff should be is bare. I've tried a couple of alternative browsers (though nothing Windows based) and it all looks the same; empty.

I don't believe this has been caused by me (if this has been this way for a few weeks) so initially it feels like some unexpected interaction between the vBulletin/Forum scripts and Googles mapping API. But it's going to take me a while to work this out - never had to look into anything like this before.

Jeff.

Jeff (et al),

it's got something to do with accessing the map using the usual https (encrypted) mode. If you edit the url to remove the s in https, it presents at it should. Wierd....

Mark

Well Mark,

I've "chopped" the "s" out of the URL as you did, and I get the map displayed but watermarked with "For Development Purposes Only" and in a friend dull grey colour.

A brief skip through the internet would seem to indicate that the Google maps service is no longer free (it seems this possibly happened a couple of months ago). To re-enable it I would need to associate a bill paying mechanism to the connection and be prepared to pay, on demand, what they charge once you've used up your "free entitlement".

I doubt that we're that worried by the map facility and extras that Google can offer and there remain some alternative (and still free) options that could replace it.

I'll keep people updated though I wouldn't suggest holding your collect breath, yet.

The map stopped working when the site was upgraded from ver 5.5 php to 7.
This secured the site allowing https to be used.

As only 2 people noticed in over 4 months, it was clearly not used. The developer of the map has not got around to changing his script and may never do so.
If Jeff has found a new version that can bypass Google profit making system, I'm sure a new one will appear.

Jeff not sure your aware or not but support for PHP7 stops in 12/2018