Forum slow response

[Albert]

I have updated the forum to the latest version of the software.  The forum is now running on PHP8, which has considerable performance improvements, and Invision stated this alone should help with the response times.  It certainly is faster for me now, compared to right before I began the update process.

 

To that end, if anyone continues to see pages taking a long time to load, or if you see the "Community is temporarily unavailable", you can help me by posting here with the date/time this happened, as well as the specific URL you received the slow loading or "Unavailable" message.  This can the help Invision track down why those particular pages are loading slowly (generally it's slow database access, and some pages are considerably more complex in queries than others), and hopefully make improvements/fixes that would alleviate such issues.

 

Thanks,

 

 ..Al

[+Peter Rabitt]

Thanks for the reply.. It only happens about once every other week. I just wait a minute and hit reset/reload and the page comes up.. Just thought you would like to see the mesg.

 

Peter

[Albert]

1 minute ago, Peter Rabitt said:

Thanks for the reply.. It only happens about once every other week. I just wait a minute and hit reset/reload and the page comes up.. Just thought you would like to see the mesg.

Oh, definitely I want to know about them, as that should not happen.  Very rarely is fine and not a big deal, but when many people are seeing the forum timeout and it's happening over the course of a few days, that's a big problem that I want to get resolved ASAFP.   And especially now that I've updated the forum, I definitely want to know about this if it keeps happening.

 

Thank you,

 

 ..Al

[TGB1718]

3 hours ago, Albert said:

I have updated the forum to the latest version of the software.  The forum is now running on PHP8, which has considerable performance improvements,

@Albert thanks for the update, still getting slow responses here between 5 and 10 seconds a page.

and a search on the ST forum produced this after about 2 minutes:-

 

 

Temporary Server Problem

This community is temporarily unavailable

Please wait a few minutes and try again.

Invision Community                                                504

[Albert]

4 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

@Albert thanks for the update, still getting slow responses here between 5 and 10 seconds a page.

and a search on the ST forum produced this after about 2 minutes:-

It would be helpful to know if it's specific threads that are taking long to load, and specific URLs if you have them.  Everything has been loading pretty quickly for me since the update.  Except for searches, which are going to be slower until I get Elasticsearch up and running.  I will be working on that once I get caught up with store orders.

 

Thanks for the feedback.

 

 ..Al

[TGB1718]

11 hours ago, Albert said:

It would be helpful to know if it's specific threads that are taking long to load, and specific URLs if you have them.

I have bookmarks for the following 3 forums

Atari 8-Bit Computers - AtariAge Forums

Atari 5200 / 8-bit Programming - AtariAge Forums

Atari ST/TT/Falcon Computers - AtariAge Forums

 

It doesn't seem to be anything specific, sometimes clicking on a thread and it loads in about a second, but sometimes

up to 10 seconds there doesn't seem to be any particular thread.

 

This morning I clicked on a new thread in the 5200/8-Bit Programming, read it, clicked on the "back Arrow" to go

back to the main forum and it took nearly 2 minutes, I was expecting a timeout, but it did get there.

 

I also clicked on the Atari 8-Bit Computers link and one time after about 10 seconds all that got displayed was:-

Atari 8-Bit Computers

Atari's original 8-bit computer line, featuring the Atari 400, 800, XL, and XE series of computers. Powerful and well-engineered, the Atari 8-bit computers are still popular with fans today!

 

Nothing else, even though I had loaded this page a few times already this morning.

Clicking "refresh" and it loaded normally.

 

I don't get this with any other sites/forums, so I don't think it's my PC/browser.

[+Stephen]

I got a different error than usual today.  It lasted for 5 minutes (9:31 to 9:36AM EST).  Pasting the URL and error text below:
 

https://forums.atariage.com/topic/328425-how-did-you-find-out-about-the-crashtm/page/12/#comment-5149263

 

403 ERROR
The request could not be satisfied.
Request blocked. We can't connect to the server for this app or website at this time. There might be too much traffic or a configuration error. Try again later, or contact the app or website owner.
If you provide content to customers through CloudFront, you can find steps to troubleshoot and help prevent this error by reviewing the CloudFront documentation.

Generated by cloudfront (CloudFront)
Request ID: ohWO7gen8qwKexEjPzxuzBz-ENX2OCkZMGIG45iNiINysRTw6CBhEA==

 

[+x=usr(1536)]

I'm seeing timeouts as well, virtually all of them search-related.  Here's what I've noticed:

• Full-site searches seem to take longer to complete than CloudFront's gateway holds the session for, leading to 504 errors
  • https://forums.atariage.com/search/?q=one&quick=1 (note the short search term; I'll come back to this)
  • 
• Forum-only searches may time out if short search terms are used, but this seems to be intermittent
  • https://forums.atariage.com/search/?q=two&quick=1&type=forums_topic&nodes=16
  • May result in the same error (504) as a full forum search, may not
  • Just worked OK for me, but the possibility of it tripping itself up is there
• Thread-only searches almost always work, but can still trip up on short search terms
  • It's rare, and I haven't seen it do it in a couple of days

One footnote about full-forum searches: search terms four characters or larger (incluting multi-word searches) seem to work OK the most consistently.  What I mean by this is that searching for terms like 'one' or 'two' are pretty much guaranteed to result in a 504, but 'three' or 'four' or 'Atari 2600' won't.

[Albert]

Yes, searches are super slow and will sometimes timeout.  This will be fixed once I get Elasticsearch installed.  I will have that done once I get caught up on store orders, which is my primary focus at the moment.  Then fixing this will be my top priority, as it's driving me nutty as well (I often have to search the forum for rather specific things).  Thread searches are going to be better since only a very small subset of posts need to be searched, but there are some rather large threads, so even then these could be slow.

 

 ..Al

[+Stephen]

So I got another 403 (response blocked) error at 5:05PM at this URL https://forums.atariage.com/topic/343350-unknown-atari-machine/?failedReply=1

 

I think there may be an issue where if too many posts are opened in a short time period, I am being temporarily blocked.  I use a browser extension called LinkClump.  This lets me simply draw a box around all the "new post" links in a forum and opens everything in new tabs.  If it helps, I think the errors happened after 25 tabs were rapidly opened.  I've been using this setup for years now, and it never happened before the upgrade.

[Albert]

1 minute ago, Stephen said:

So I got another 403 (response blocked) error at 5:05PM at this URL https://forums.atariage.com/topic/343350-unknown-atari-machine/?failedReply=1

 

I think there may be an issue where if too many posts are opened in a short time period, I am being temporarily blocked.  I use a browser extension called LinkClump.  This lets me simply draw a box around all the "new post" links in a forum and opens everything in new tabs.  If it helps, I think the errors happened after 25 tabs were rapidly opened.  I've been using this setup for years now, and it never happened before the upgrade.

Yes, it is very likely you were temporarily blocked because you opened up so many windows at the same time (which basically looks like a Denial of Service attack).  The current firewall is probably a bit more aggressive than the one being used previously with the forum.  There's not much I can do about that, though.

 

 ..Al

[Ricky Spanish]

Been watching closely and honestly, at least from my area, haven't noticed any slowdown whether from PC or Phone, searches are quick as well. 

[+Stephen]

1 hour ago, Albert said:

Yes, it is very likely you were temporarily blocked because you opened up so many windows at the same time (which basically looks like a Denial of Service attack).  The current firewall is probably a bit more aggressive than the one being used previously with the forum.  There's not much I can do about that, though.

 

 ..Al

OK - I will stop opening so many tabs all at once.  I hope I haven't been causing any problems by doing so.

[Albert]

2 minutes ago, Stephen said:

OK - I will stop opening so many tabs all at once.  I hope I haven't been causing any problems by doing so.

No, I don't think it's a big deal, but I'm not surprised at all that you were blocked.  I'm curious how many tabs you managed to open before you saw tabs with the 403 error. 

 

 ..Al

[+Stephen]

2 minutes ago, Albert said:

No, I don't think it's a big deal, but I'm not surprised at all that you were blocked.  I'm curious how many tabs you managed to open before you saw tabs with the 403 error. 

 

 ..Al

I can say with certainty it was between 25 and 35.  I know this because the main 8-bit forum had 25 tabs, the programming forum had 1 new post, and the "my content" tab I believe had 5 posts, of which the final 4 did not open.  I only noticed the 403 when I attempted to reply to the 1st post I opened.

[+scorpio_ny]

Hi @Albert,

 

Earlier tonight, I was just creating a new topic when my screen froze posting. Then I got the following message:

 

I tried a couple of times to refresh to get back in and I only got that same screen. I walked away for about 15 minutes to try later. When I tried again and refreshed the screen came back, it posted my topic a second time.

 

 

 

[TGB1718]

Hi @Albert just wondering if there's a date when this will be fixed, it's always so slow for me

really spoiling coming here (which I look forward to many times a day)

[Albert]

25 minutes ago, TGB1718 said:

Hi @Albert just wondering if there's a date when this will be fixed, it's always so slow for me

really spoiling coming here (which I look forward to many times a day)

What in particular is slow for you?

 

 ..Al

[TGB1718]

1 hour ago, Albert said:

What in particular is slow for you?

It's everything, sometimes ok, but most times at least several seconds to load any page.

This is just clicking on any forum page/link, nothing has really improved  

since I first raised the issue, not done any searches recently though.

[+Stephen]

I've just noticed another issue with the "My Content".  A few days ago, it started always showing me items that have no new posts to read.  It puts them down at the bottom in an "earlier" category, even though I am set to only show unread items.  Not a huge deal, just wondering what changed.

 

OK - I solved two issues with one setting change.  I did not realize I was searching for an entire year.  I set the time period to only 7 days and not only is the search must faster, but I am not getting the "earlier" section.  Posting this in case anyone else is having similar issues.

[TGB1718]

@Albert sorry to keep asking, but just wondering if this will be resolved in the near future, it's really spoiling my time on the forum, virtually every link

is taking between 10 to 15 seconds before the page loads and occasionally it fails to load the page completely.

 

Never had these issue's before the move to the new servers and it's only this forum that has this slow response.

 

Edit: Even posting this took about 15 seconds

Edited November 19, 2022 by TGB1718

[_The Doctor__]

I am wondering if the forum scrambled it's own eggs so to speak... I used just click next to get to next unread post now I must go to the list each time and then click the first unread post for each one... somethings a half bubble off plumb...

the hiccuping aside, it's all a bother.

Not sure if the update is performing a rebuild of some kind or if it's rebuilding on a pile of renamed items that it's choking on. Whatever it is, it's not quite right. Looks like they didn't test their work and the days of updates building and testing before replacing are gone.

[+Stephen]

5 hours ago, TGB1718 said:

@Albert sorry to keep asking, but just wondering if this will be resolved in the near future, it's really spoiling my time on the forum, virtually every link

is taking between 10 to 15 seconds before the page loads and occasionally it fails to load the page completely.

 

Never had these issue's before the move to the new servers and it's only this forum that has this slow response.

 

Edit: Even posting this took about 15 seconds

Not doubting your issues, but I've never had that problem.  Searches take a long time, but this forum search has always been shit and I've used google for searching.  OH - I see you are in the UK, I am in the US.  That would be the first thing I'd look into - maybe there is a DNS issue?

[TGB1718]

7 hours ago, Stephen said:

That would be the first thing I'd look into - maybe there is a DNS issue?

I thought that too, was the first thing I tried, I don't have any issues with any other sites in the US, so at a loss as

to why it's so bad for me, as I said in my last post, until we moved to this new server I never had any issues.

 

Agreed on the search, total rubbish

 

[TGB1718]

11 hours ago, _The Doctor__ said:

I used just click next to get to next unread post now I must go to the list each time and then click the first unread post for each one... somethings a half bubble off plumb...

I find that rather annoying too 👎🏾was always nice to continue a thread from were you last read and start at new posts