Forum website has been sluggish for the last few days

[Ace-Garageguy]

If it's a problem within the code the forum runs on, it's going to take some pretty good magic to fix it.

Think of those Yugos that were delivered with crankshafts made of the wrong steel.

You can't just slap a patch on it and drive. You've got to replace the crank, or make a new one, and of course that requires completely rebuilding the engine as well.

Not the best analogy, but close enough.

[GLMFAA1]

You can add my name to the list. Took me 6 minutes to get to this thread and reply

greg

[Dave Ambrose]

Update

Thank you all for being patient. 

In case it wasn't clear, we are still running on our old server. We won't be migrating until this problem gets diagnosed. 

This problem has been an exercise in ruling out possible causes. Current hypothesis is that this is being cause by a Huawei search engine crawling our site to index it. Normally, we would tell it not to make the troublesome accesses, but it's ignoring those directives and crawling the site anyway. When it does so, it loads down our server and causes a slowdown for legitimate users. Real search engines throttle their inquiries so this doesn't happen. Many other sites are reporting that Huawei's IP addresses have been hitting sites hard and causing performance problems. That looks like it might be the case here. I'll try to confirm that, then configure the server to block their access. 

It would help me if you can note the date, time, and your time zone when it's slow and post that information here. That will help narrow down my search. 

I may be taking the server offline at short notice as part of my diagnosis process. 

Again, thanks, I won't be quitting until this is solved. 

[Muncie]

For what it's worth and I may be missing it altogether... I use Unread Content to find posts that I haven't read.  The default search period is 365 days.  Some history - a few years ago the default was only 30 days but some upgrades changed the default to 365. At that point, I played around with it and tried resetting my search period to five days It was quicker.  However, the site was still pretty fast with the 365 default.  Not worth changing every time I logged on.  I've played around with the search period with the current slow search speed, and it speeds things up to revise search period to five days.   

Dave, thank you for all your work around here, it is appreciated.

[Dave Ambrose]

On 7/29/2024 at 8:51 PM, Muncie said:

For what it's worth and I may be missing it altogether... I use Unread Content to find posts that I haven't read.  The default search period is 365 days.  Some history - a few years ago the default was only 30 days but some upgrades changed the default to 365. At that point, I played around with it and tried resetting my search period to five days It was quicker.  However, the site was still pretty fast with the 365 default.  Not worth changing every time I logged on.  I've played around with the search period with the current slow search speed, and it speeds things up to revise search period to five days.   

Dave, thank you for all your work around here, it is appreciated.

Thank you! I hadn't noticed this, but I think it's an important piece of this puzzle. 

[89AKurt]

I feel your pain!   It was a couple days ago that it was really bad, I'm in northern Arizona.   This is going to be the norm from now on, everywhere for everyone.  For example, how much does everyone love making up new passwords?  Gotta love being a computer tech.   At least it hasn't reached Flickr levels, about a decade ago they did a major revamp of their website, and it was a huge mess.
*edit*. Took some time for this screenshot to upload.

Edited July 31, 2024 by 89AKurt

[Matt Bacon]

1 hour ago, Dave Ambrose said:

Thank you! I hadn't noticed this, but I think it's an important piece of this puzzle. 

Another thing is that if you go to the "Unread Content" stream as your default way of finding new stuff to read, according to the web developer tools console on Firefox every one of the "thumbnail" pictures it's loading inline in the page is the full size image file. So if the server is already being hit by many requests, having to serve 10-20 250KB plus image files 3-4 at a time can't be helping matters...

best,

M.

 

[Dave Ambrose]

Update:

Have confirmed that (ro)bot traffic is the root cause of our problem. Normally, our server runs about 5% load. These days, it's averaging 50%. I have some ideas for remediating this, and will be implementing them later this week. We'll have to see if this works. 

[redneckrigger]

Dave, thanks for the effort you are putting forth to fix this issue. I came to the forums twice today, 31 July 2024, once at 3 PM and now at 845 PM. Both times took an average of 60 seconds to open any thread, and I tried several each time. I am in the Eastern time zone. 

[bobthehobbyguy]

19 hours ago, Dave Ambrose said:

Update:

Have confirmed that (ro)bot traffic is the root cause of our problem. Normally, our server runs about 5% load. These days, it's averaging 50%. I have some ideas for remediating this, and will be implementing them later this week. We'll have to see if this works. 

It's bad enough to have to deal with issues but it's annoying when it's because the rules are skirted.

Hope you can come up with a good solution Dave.

[Ace-Garageguy]

On 7/29/2024 at 11:40 PM, Dave Ambrose said:

It would help me if you can note the date, time, and your time zone when it's slow and post that information here. That will help narrow down my search. 

09:39 EST   Friday, 8-2-24    PLENTY FAST RIGHT NOW, WORKING LIKE IT SHOULD

EDIT: 09:55 starting to hang again...

Edited August 2, 2024 by Ace-Garageguy
TYPO

[ModelcarJR]

For what its worth, my security software keeps telling me lately that the website is not safe because it is not https. I have to hit a button that says continue on to the website and it takes forever and sometimes I just have to close and do it again. And it is slow going back and forth to different threads once I get on it. Is that something new with the website of is it that my security software is just catching it now? 

[Harpo]

I'm in central Iowa, extremely slow loading here.  

[Ace-Garageguy]

08:59 EST Saturday, Aug. 3, 2024. Nice and fast, like the old days.

[Bainford]

Everything is super fast for the first time in a couple months. 
Aug 4 9:45 ADT (GMT -4 hrs)

 

[Ace-Garageguy]

6 minutes ago, Bainford said:

Everything is super fast for the first time in a couple months. 
Aug 4 9:45 ADT (GMT -4 hrs)

 

Indeed. And a hearty WELL DONE to Dave and his minions.  

Inquiring minds wanna know...what did the problem turn out to be?

[Roncla]

I've just found the board to be back to normal down here in NZ. Kudos to Dave.

[Bainford]

Very well done! Huge thanks to Dave & team. I know this has been a hard win. Your efforts are appreciated. Cheers all. 

[Dave Ambrose]

4 hours ago, Ace-Garageguy said:

Indeed. And a hearty WELL DONE to Dave and his minions.  

Inquiring minds wanna know...what did the problem turn out to be?

We had one or more entities trying to read out the site content. It effectively turned into a denial of service attack. This problem hit other forums too. I was able to develop an adequately selective filter to keep them from accessing the site. They may work around it, but it's sufficiently flexible that I can filter them out again if needed. 

[TonyK]

Thank you for the time and work to fix the board. I was able to bounce around different subjects this morning with no problems.

[DJMar]

The past 24 hours has been very slow loading, especially going from forum to forum, as well as loading any thread that has large pics in it.

Just a heads up.

[TarheelRick]

Just now (12:22 pm EST) when I clicked the back arrow to leave this particular post the screen got slightly gray and the word "Loading" appeared in a black box at the bottom of the screen. I had to leave the site and attempt to reenter. It took a more than normal amount of time to reopen the site, pretty close to a minute.

Edit: when I attempted to submit this post it took 15-20 seconds.

Edited September 5, 2024 by TarheelRick

[Dave Ambrose]

I just noticed that slowness. Gonna take a look. 

[Ace-Garageguy]

Hanging so bad this AM 11:30 EDT as to be virtually unusable. Photos extremely slow to load, if at all, generally unresponsive, and sometimes the site won't open from a browser.

But it's intermittent, as I was able to get in just now through Firefox, while I got timed-out repeatedly on Chrome.

[stitchdup]

7.20 gmt and theres a problem with the unread content menu. the first page of results repeats and nothing from more than 5 hours ago is showing up in the results