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The SFN Server needs help


iNow

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Sorry guys. The hamster running the server is demanding 15-minute union coffee breaks and health benefits. I've entered extended negotiations but haven't made any progress yet.

Just wondering if you're able to offer a more serious update to this issue. I suspect there is activity of some sort happening on the backend to help resolve the latency challenges?
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Apologies, guys. I've also noted the server is extremely slow as of late, hence my initial modifications to try to tune things which clearly failed! I'll try to convene with Capn' and sort this all out over the next few days.

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It's currently about as fast as the syrup on my porridge.

 

I had time to make a pot of tea this morning between clicking on SF in favourites and seeing the opening page.

 

This information may be helpful:

 

It is consistently about ten times as fast between 7pm and 10 pm GMT as it is between 7 am and 10 am GMT in my UK location.

Edited by studiot
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It's currently about as fast as the syrup on my porridge.

 

I had time to make a pot of tea this morning between clicking on SF in favourites and seeing the opening page.

 

This information may be helpful:

 

It is consistently about ten times as fast between 7pm and 10 pm GMT as it is between 7 am and 10 am GMT in my UK location.

 

 

Yeah, I also get the feeling that it is slower during (European) mornings than the rest of the day.

 

 

 

IIRC server is UK based - so perhaps we are getting a smaller fraction of available clout in the mornings as the local users who also user same company get going - but this eases off in the european afternoon as everyone else stops working and views videos of cats on youtube

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IIRC server is UK based - so perhaps we are getting a smaller fraction of available clout in the mornings as the local users who also user same company get going - but this eases off in the european afternoon as everyone else stops working and views videos of cats on youtube

 

Never discount the ability of Internet cats to consume bandwidth. It's apparently their favorite food.

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Today has been better.

 

 

Agreed, but not good.

 

Does anyone think that the problems are driving (potential) members away?

 

It must be pretty frustrating to ask what is an important question to oneself and find that, even if there has been an answer, you can't get to it.

 

I have noticed many questions lately in homework (ie not crackpot) that the OP never seems to return to.

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Agreed, but not good.

 

Does anyone think that the problems are driving (potential) members away?

 

It must be pretty frustrating to ask what is an important question to oneself and find that, even if there has been an answer, you can't get to it.

 

I have noticed many questions lately in homework (ie not crackpot) that the OP never seems to return to.

Going by my own feelings, and I come on here everyday, I would say yes. I think it needs to be addressed with some concerted effort and concern.

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Going by my own feelings, and I come on here everyday, I would say yes. I think it needs to be addressed with some concerted effort and concern.

 

That, at least, is happening. This is an Administrator duty and we have three of them trying their best across a huge puddle and several hours time difference to figure out what's happening. It doesn't seem to be a single solution problem, so they're trying to fix the pieces without taking the whole site down to do it.

 

We're trying to put the best face on this, and please don't take the attempts at levity as a lack of concern. Though all unpaid volunteers, the entire staff has a great deal of vested interest in our community here at SFN. We thank you for your patience; you all are the best, brightest and most interesting people we know and it's agony to think we might lose any of you to technical issues.

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Okay, a brief update from me on this.

 

We've identified a couple of potential areas of concern, mostly to do with the database backend which seemed to be under quite heavy strain. We use the SFN server for a few other websites, and one of these seems to have a table that was excessively large. This has been truncated now, so we'll see if the database server has some relief now! There has also been an update applied to PHP (which drives IPB, our forum software) which has also been applied. Plus we are tweaking quite a few parameters to optimise memory usage generally on the server.

 

The state of the forum is very important to me - after all I've been knocking around these parts going on 10 years now. Ultimately if the forum continues to be slow over the next 1-2 weeks, the problem can be rectified through some hardware upgrades to the server. If we need to do this then we will!

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Phi and Dave, what I meant in my post was: if a casual person came here feeling the same way I have on this issue at times it would very likely put them off, but I myself, am not yet ready to give up one of my few sources of brain-food just yet....you lot are my substitute for my non-existent T.V. smile.png

Edited by StringJunky
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Okay, a brief update from me on this.

 

We've identified a couple of potential areas of concern, mostly to do with the database backend which seemed to be under quite heavy strain. We use the SFN server for a few other websites, and one of these seems to have a table that was excessively large. This has been truncated now, so we'll see if the database server has some relief now! There has also been an update applied to PHP (which drives IPB, our forum software) which has also been applied. Plus we are tweaking quite a few parameters to optimise memory usage generally on the server.

 

The state of the forum is very important to me - after all I've been knocking around these parts going on 10 years now. Ultimately if the forum continues to be slow over the next 1-2 weeks, the problem can be rectified through some hardware upgrades to the server. If we need to do this then we will!

Do you have the same issue with the other websites?

Maybe it is a question of priority set.

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