The Café seems to be suffering from an inability to serve pages these days. Throughout the day and evening, and whether from my high speed link at home, or my even higher speed link at work, the Café locks up on average once every 5 or 10 minutes. These lock ups can range in length from 30 seconds to over 5 minutes.

Regardless, anything longer than about 30 seconds brings up a page time out message from my browser.

I've asked before about lock ups due to a 10:00pm pacific time back up program (i presume), but these new lock ups occur throughout the day and evening, every day, and from multiple locations.

All my web access is extrememly high speed, my work access being on a "big pipe" fibre link to a local internet backbone.

I'm wondering if the Café tech staff are aware of this issue?

Cheers.

I asked the same question here:
http://www.themagiccafe.com/forums/viewt......50&4

It looks like you didn't get an answer either Jim!

Guys, there are several reasons why the Café might be running slower than usual. If a lot of searches are being performed at the same time, response time will decrease. The Café recycles about every 15 minutes or so and you might be in that time period. There could be actual server issues but generally the only way to find that out is if our tech folks are on line at the time of the slow down. These are just a few of the possible causes. The tech folks would be more knowledgeable about that but I thought I'd let you know your question wasn't being ignored.

No worries Dave, I'm more interested in making sure that the appropriate tech folks know about this than I am getting any "personal" response.

This is actually a pretty serious problem for most site management types, it's usually an indication that the number of requests for page views is greatly exceeding the server chains ability to serve them.

It's both a very good, and very bad problem!

My IT folks at work tell me that if the site search function is able to slow down, or completely stop, the entire Café then there's a serious problem either brewing, or already here.

I did get an answer. And like I said before, not a gripe.

I am usually on the Café anywhere between 9 PM Pacific Time to 2 AM Pacific Time, and I have never noticed a slow-down or lock-up. I have DSL access, too.

This is to any member experiencing a slow down:

If you check out the very bottom footer you'll see a "This page was created in... seconds" message.

If you experience one of these slowdowns, and assuming the page finally does come up, take a look there and see if there's any indication of excessive time delays or queries.

That might help Gene track things better without him having to be up at 3 in the morning.

Dave> this has all been covered b-4: it's just the way this particular system operates...

Julie

I agree that it's been covered before, but people keep bringing it up. I disagree that it's simply the way this system operates. To a computer tech that reasoning is unacceptable.

Complaining without proof gets people nowhere. My idea at least gives people an idea of what to look for.

The only problem is that you can't get the "This page was created in 0.126915 seconds, requiring 12 database queries." bit if you can't get to the page.

Yeah, I know. That's the only flaw in my plan. That's why I was hoping that *when you did get through* it might provide a clue to whether it's the script, the database or the ISP at fault.

Dave is ABSOLUTELY smokin with this idea, and HERE is a cut and paste of my most recent "time out"

All content & postings Copyright © 2001-2007 Steve Brooks. All Rights Reserved.
This page was created in 71.249844 seconds, requiring 10 database queries.

To those "who never experience a lock up" you must be luckier than I, because this 71 second wait happens ALL the time, sometimes a bit shorter, sometimes a LOT longer.

Perhaps I'm a heavier user than some others and experience the problem more often.

Thanks for that suggestion Dave.

Not to put to fine a point on it, but 71 seconds is a bit more than an inconvenience, and indicates major problems either brewing, or already here.
The suggestion that the Café is free and therefore you have to suck up anything that comes your way is severely flawed simply because that statement has absolutely nothing to do with the question under discussion!

Oops, one more thing to mention. How about the time of day?

71 seconds does make it seem like there's a server slowdown of some sort. If it's shared (I don't think so) then other users could be maxing it out. If it's a stand alone machine, there has to be some CPU activity that's causing it.

This is not directed at you, or anyone for that matter, but I'm trying to get people to think constructively instead of merely complaining. The more we can do to help the better off we'll all be.

Here's my final post on the issue.

I've been pointing out server slowdowns here on the Café in a few posts (there's no point in posting the same thing over, and over, and over again) over the past few months now.
I don't make these things up, simply because it makes no sense to do so, and I am making a presumption that whoever looks after the server WOULD be extremely interested in a 71 second server delay.....I know I would be if I was an IT guy.

There's a server problem, plain and simple. It's been occuring more and more over the past few months. There's no subjective opinion taking place here, I'm simply telling the mods and techs what I'm seeing as a "medium" Café user.

It's not brain surgery to find out what's causing this, as the server log will contain details on EVERY page served.
There's no real problem for me, I'm simply wanting a Café experience that doesn't include long time outs and delays.
I don't feel obligated to "suck" anything up because the Café is free, and as I pointed out above, the fact that the Café is free has NOTHING to do with what I'm talking about.

The reality is that there's VERY LITTLE a guy who is simply an end user can do to help out the folks who manage the server, as all the information is at their end, with very little (none really) at the users end. Daves idea about the time stamp for pages served is a great idea. I don't think the tech folks would want to see an endless string of posts featuring long page serves, as a few will highlight that the problem DOES in fact exist, and should presumably steer them at least in the direction of understanding what's going on.

It's the Café, it's not bran surgery, I'm not asking that this gets fixed for "me", I'm simply pointing out the those who might (should) care that there's a problem with the server. Fixing it or understanding it is strictly in the domain of those folks who can physicaly walk into the same room that the server sits in.

'nuff said from me anyway!

Yes, I'm quite aware of it, and there's no "easy" answer.

The main problem lies with the search engine. Keyword searches, to be specific. When a search is being run it holds up other page requests until the search is complete. I've tried many variations with the search engine to limit how much overhead it takes, but unfortunately every time I try to limit it in certain ways, the result is that people complain, and they're very vocal about it. I'm sure members who have been around here a while will remember this. I tried limiting to specific time periods, people complained. I tried limiting to specific forums, people complained. I spent months on it, devising several different technical ways to store and retrieve data. I even tried a knockoff of the method used by phpBB version 2 (that was an immediate bust). So, the only "real" solution to page access delays is to shut down keyword searches or limit them in some fashion - which I've already tried to do. That's not going to happen though, because I'd never hear the end of it. I'd get so many emails and PMs it's ridiculous.

So far nobody has offered to help solve the problem, people only complain about it, saying in effect that we don't know what we're doing. While I understand the frustration, I can't please everyone.

What we need is a completely separate server to handle search requests so the main server can concentrate on serving pages. Is that going to happen? No. We don't have an unlimited budget for that sort of thing. In fact, we're struggling to keep just one server afloat.

I'm sorry you're having problems, and I don't much like it either. To put it simply, it is what it is. Unless you know the backend of how this site works and how many times it's been changed as it gets bigger to try to keep up with demand and an always-increasing amount of data, you probably wouldn't know all the challenges we face. There are no full-time people to deal with this site in technical terms, there's no money to run dual servers, and we're doing the best we can with what we have.

Nuff said from me too.