Database lagging.

[frogbeastegg]

:puts book labelled 'cross species mind control' away: Thank you, Louis.

I only managed to get her one yesterday afternoon and evening, for maybe 2 minutes, if that. I was reading the update about a broken table in this thread when the org broke again; how ironic. Apparently though I was showing up on the active list even though I could not get the site to load, and it was loading as normal for Louis. I was not sat here and trying to get back all that time, but since I did a heck of a lot of writing and played some MP RTW I was able to try to get through for a good few hours.

So my problem with the org only loading for a second before halting as if I never clicked the link is more localised than I thought. I've done the expected checks to firewalls etc and nothing helped. Also nothing at all is changed on my PC those times I do manage to get here. I have not tested my PM capacity yet; yesterday morning I managed a couple through endless retrying, about 4 failures to each success.

EDIT: Whatever the problem is it's still present today; the links broke again shortly after this post.

[TosaInu]

The board will be down today as I'll work on the database. I'll start within a few minutes from now and it may take a while. Hard to say how long, but it could be a few hours.

[TosaInu]

Hello,

Time for some updating.

We had a new searchsystem, it was a pain to get it. The reason is that the computer has to perform a one time operation on a huge amount of data. The host, being a master on this computer, had to pull some tricks to get it done.

The operation took just a few minutes on my Pentium, but it drained all memory and required about a GigaByte in c:\Windows\temp. It was on, so staff could test it out (would be a shame to blow the entire server), but I was forced to delete it again during the last downtime. Server just refused to load it. The database got rid of 200,000 OT posts now.

I guess it's back to the drawing table as far as Search is concerned, queries can take up a few seconds and they are performed on the same tables as used to store your posts in. This can lock up the tables, which will cause a forum downtime. This is a problem for many larger sites and while we are not that large, our database is definately not 8 Gig in size, our hardware is not what those guys use either.

The not so great performance of the Search (20 seconds while 1 person can use it is not that fast) may be related to something else, for now it's gone while we'll monitor performance of the bare system. Still looking around for improvements. For now you'll have to use the Google search, which is surprisingly fast and returns more results than before.

I'm looking into creating a partial forumsearch (say limited to RTW and modding forums). Should be smaller and just work.

Added a tiny tweak that should help narrowband: CSS files are stored in files and no longer served from the database. It's only 6 kb, but it's cached in your temporary internet directory now instead of downloading it again and again.

[therother]

Thanks for the update, Tosa. As always, it's much appreciated.

I'm looking into creating a partial forumsearch (say limited to RTW and modding forums). Should be smaller and just work.

Interesting idea. I think it is certainly true that the lack of a comprehensive search function for these forums is a little constraining for users.

[therother]

Can't speak for anyone else, but in my experience the boards have been lightening fast for the last few days. Lag is almost non-existent, and I've been seeing download speeds in the 30KBytes/s range. Long may it continue!

[Uesugi Kenshin]

It has seemed faster to me, but I am also keeping two windows open instead of one, so I can load a page with one while I read a thread. I am much more efficient and I think the speed is up!

[Gregoshi]

It has been a little slow for me at the moment (1500 GMT). I've also started getting the dreaded "done" white screen again when trying to submit a post in the past two days.