Service Unavailable

[Grumm]

I noticed things slow this morning too with a very large number of guests, which is highly unusual. Same issue last night, with about 3000 guests. We normally max out at about 600. Perhaps someone is attacking the site.

I've just changed some backend settings and it immediately got faster. Lets see if it stays that way.

Well there is/was one user I believe is capable of doing this...
Hope it will be resolved soon !!

 

[Slap]

Only by way of feedback, still very slow from UK. 25-45 seconds to load a page

 

[isladogs]

Also from the UK, much faster than it was before Jon worked on it behind the scenes.
However, much slower than normal & I'm still losing replies. However I now copy everything

 

[GinaWhipp]

Took me three tries this morning and this time only slow to load so may be getting better. And yes, thanks to folks mentioning I now copy my post before hitting reply.

 

[Jon]

I'm doing backups and all sorts of things in the background. Performance will be poor.

 

[isladogs]

Just a thought?
Is it possible for you to show an announcement on the main screen to advise members what is going on?

 

[Jon]

Great idea!

 

[isladogs]

I saw the announcement but its disappeared again.

 

[Jon]

Took a backup of the forums last night. This caused some issues with the mysql backend. Just got that fixed. All 8 of my sites are now backed up to my PC, as well as the weekly backups that my host takes.

Also, while digging around in the code, and pruning things, I discovered some base64 hacker code, which was created a long long time ago. That has been removed.

Over 12 hours yesterday of doing backups, sorting out issues blah blah to 1am. Urgggh! I was actually dreaming about server related stuff last night as I slept!

 

[Grumm]

Glad you got the forum back up and running
Awesome work !!!

 

[NauticalGent]

I was actually dreaming about server related stuff last night as I slept!

One tends to forget that nightmares are dreams too...

 

[isladogs]

Many thanks for your hard work Jon.
Its a lot faster loading pages though, as you're probably aware, there are still issues posting new content/replies

 

[Jon]

I am aware of the issues, but I cannot take any action yet for reasons I do not want to make public. Eventually, I hope to get everything sorted.

 

[Jon]

Expect more downtime over the next 3 days, but it will be for the long term good of the forums.

 

[Jon]

I've identified the mysql database problem to be something about a sessions table. I just deleted the contents of it and the last couple of days posts have gone. It will take me some time to try to find a solution to this recurrent problem, but at least you can get access to the site.

 

[Jon]

I've been updating some plugins, and other changes. So, expect the board to be on and off for a while. I will keep it on as long as I can.

 

[Deleted member 147267]

FYI: performance on my side of the pond is much, much better.

 

[Jon]

@Micron, do you mean compared to before the change of host?

 

[Deleted member 147267]

I think so. Not sure exactly when that was. Can only say that it's much better than what it was before this thread started - as in when someone first reported that we were getting the 503 (or whatever it was) error page. Does that help?

 

[Jon]

We supposedly have nearly 1000 guests on the forum right now, which I recon must be bots, because Sunday's are normally quiet. But in any case, whatever they are, the forums are barely breaking a sweat. And I still haven't setup litespeed and its cache.

I think we should be good from this point forwards.