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Underground > Policy & Help >

Board Failure

pointless and uncalled for

08:39 / 24.08.04

Not sure what the cause is but there seems to be an increase in the occurence of overpacked board failure.

Is this a technical problem that needs to be looked at or do we just need to throw more money at the bandwidth goblins.

10:05 / 24.08.04

Though I can offer no solutions or any technical help I can say that I've noticed this happening much more often; usually in the mid to late afternoon (that's G.M.T).

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:06 / 24.08.04

Is this the mysql errors? Cos I've also been getting a lot of those.

11:15 / 24.08.04

Well I don't know if Seldom meant them but those pesky mysql errors is what I'm talking about.

pointless and uncalled for

12:38 / 24.08.04

That's the ones.

12:21 / 25.08.04

I believe there's a problem with the hosting...Tom alluded to this in a recent P&H thread. From the phrasing of some of the error messages, I'm assuming that it means too many people are trying to access the same thing at the same time. Time for a cull?

06:44 / 26.08.04

Uh oh! - Barbelith *is* dying!

pointless and uncalled for

10:07 / 26.08.04

Gah, the bandwith goblins are demanding fealty again.

13:12 / 26.08.04

Perhaps we could try human sacrifice. This would have the advantage of simultaneously thinning the numbers and placating the bandwidth goblins.

13:47 / 26.08.04

(starts sharpening Flying Guillotine and eyeing off Quimper666)

21:30 / 28.08.04

I volunteer to be the human sacrifice since I appear to have nothing at all to say lately and therefore my lack of contribution cannot be missed.

You can hang me from the Barbelith tree like Odin.

09:27 / 30.08.04

We can't use you! Who will make us cake?

Less searchable M0rd4nt

14:27 / 31.08.04

Can I just mention that, in the event that you write a post and the MySQLatch eats it, HITTING THE REFRESH BUTTON REPOSTS THE POST. So you end up with multiples all over the shop.

Not that Mordy minds. Mordy is a good house-elf. Mordy loves to clean up after her posters. Delete requests make Mordy happy.

18:45 / 31.08.04

I believe there's a problem with the hosting...Tom alluded to this in a recent P&H thread. From the phrasing of some of the error messages, I'm assuming that it means too many people are trying to access the same thing at the same time. Time for a cull?

Yeah i've seen this and was wondering whether it's too many people on Barbelith as a whole at the same time or too many in a specific area.

The error message i can half make out is this one :

Warning: mysql_connect(): User barbelit_4 has already more than 'max_user_connections' active connections in /usr/www/users/barbelit/barbelith/includes/init.txt on line 2

I don't know if it means a specific area or not though, or if there's something written into the code that automatically shuts the board down when the amount of people online reaches a certain number.

20:51 / 31.08.04

I think this happens when too many users try to access the database server. Since Barbelith shares that, I'm not sure that there's anything we can do locally that will guarantee that it never gets overloaded. I think the only solution is a dedicated server, which has prohibitive cost and maintenance implications.

20:17 / 02.09.04

Well...

*looks around nervously*

... more of us could choose to pay for Barbelith...

21:21 / 03.09.04

I think this happens when too many users try to access the database server.

Too many users? What, you mean when all 50 of us who actually post suddenly decide to come here at once but oddly no one posts anything at all for hours?

I think Barbelith must be typed in Invisible ink. Which clearly I don't have the reveal key for.

07:49 / 06.09.04

I think we share our database server with a bunch of other boards. Think of it like this: Barbelith is a tenant in a shared house with only one bathroom. At certain peak times, Barbelith tries to get into the bathroom, but gets stuck in the door along with the five other tenants, all of whom want to use the bathroom at the same time. This causes friction, and results in you seeing an SQL error.

I use this analogy because I seem to have associated the noise 'squelch' with SQL, and it seems that this would be appropriate, given that a bunch of people stuck in a door on their way to the bathroom would, sooner or later, result in squelch.

13:54 / 06.09.04

(Tch) It's the age-old problem, then, isn't it?
Do we kill the other tenants, or do we need them to pay their part of the rent?

14:28 / 06.09.04

Actually, I think the problem is that Barbelith itself counts as one user, who is only allowed so many simultaneous connections to the database. Every time someone tries to load a page it has to consult the database. Therefore if lots of people do it at the same time, the database will say "no, fuck off" to some of the attempted connections.

The question is, why do we get this problem when I've not seen it anywhere else? Are the connections staying alive too long? Is the maximum number set too low? And at that point I have no idea because I don't know the server setup and I'm not exactly an expert on PHP+SQL anyway.

Less searchable M0rd4nt

12:15 / 22.09.04

Just thought I'd mention that I can't see the board with Mozilla. IE works fine. Are the servers in Bizzaroworld? Because I tink we should be kept informed of these things.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:22 / 22.09.04

Firefox was reading it fine today... still the odd mysql thingummy though.

23:46 / 22.09.04

Actually I have it seen it elsewhere, same problem, too many users at the same time (I think that's what it turned out to be).

08:18 / 23.09.04

The comment on pay is interesting. Basically because of the weight of browsing and posting, Barbelith eats up a fair amount of bandwidth and as a result I have to get a more expensive hosting package.

We could probably just about make do with this package at pair:
http://www.pair.com/services/high_volume/hv1.html

But for a range of historical reasons (including that they've upped the limits since I originally subscribed to this account) we're on this package: http://www.pair.com/services/high_volume/hv2.html

Which is around $130 a month which is about £73/4 pounds at current exchange rates (and used to be around £90).

In the last month I have received £41.92 in donations from people. Now I'm more than comfortable to meet that shortfall - £30 a month isn't a particular hardship for me to pay up for.

The problem we've got though isn't with bandwidth, it's about them settign limits on our usage of the MySQL database, and the only way we can stop that happening with Pair as far as I can see is to move to a dedicated server. The server rates are listed on this page:

http://www.pair.com/services/dedicated/

The cheapest normal server they've got available is $249 a month which is a less acceptable £140 a month, leaving me with a monthly shell-out of £100 to keep this place running smoothly. If you move to the bottom of that page, there's the possibility of getting servers between $150 (£85) and $200 (£110), the first of which I could probably manage if it were available (only shelling out £45 a month) and the second of which I probably couldn't (£70 a month) - except then I'd be a little nervous about fouling up the server and not being able to recover stuff. And this is (of course) ignornig costs like renewing the domain name etc. etc.

So basically there you go - it's not just about money, but money is an issue. Certainly a few more monthly donations from regulars wouldn't go amiss, although I wouldn't guarantee that would make it possible for me to upgrade servers and stuff - time's another obvious constraint for all of us after all.

09:39 / 23.09.04

I wouldn't mind paying a bit more...

Our Lady Has Left the Building

10:57 / 23.09.04

As am I, but even when I get the stick out and shout at people to SEND ME CASH TO PASS ON TO TOM a lot of people say they will and don't bother and it's never enough to cover even one months rent at the current rates, and it's quite right not to expect Tom to shell out all that extra.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

21:42 / 23.09.04

a lot of people say they will and don't bother
I'm a bit shit on this front, I admit. Get the stick out IN THE PUB, Lady, and cash will be thine. (Well, Tom's).

17:05 / 24.09.04

Yeah I'll start paying too, no reason why I shouldn't....stop me spending cash on cheap booze ..

23:19 / 25.09.04

I have seen the stick in a vision and I am fearsome of it. I shall abide by the stick's power.

17:24 / 03.10.04

One minor bit of strangeness I've noticed (and seems to be linked to these errors) is that, every now and again, your new post will be added to the thread but the forum index won't know about it. I think it sorts itself out once another post is added. Current example is in F,TV&T - the Invaders thread is only down as having one reply, but when you open it up there are actually two in there.

04:58 / 04.10.04

Sometimes, I think mostly when your post opens a new page, the rest of the page will load, but no posts. Anyone else seen this?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

07:52 / 04.10.04

Yeah... I've noticed that.