# Boards Sluggish Today?



## Mark (Mar 7, 2005)

Boards Sluggish Today?


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## Crothian (Mar 7, 2005)

its like swimming in molasses


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## Darth K'Trava (Mar 7, 2005)

Yup. Acting sluggish despite my broadband connection. Usually it's trying to load a particular thread or respond to one is where the sluggishness is most noted.


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## diaglo (Mar 7, 2005)

reminds me of ye good olde dayes.. pre new server.


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## Darth K'Trava (Mar 7, 2005)

That and surfing the WOTC boards....


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## diaglo (Mar 7, 2005)

Darth K'Trava said:
			
		

> That and surfing the WOTC boards....




well that too.


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## Teflon Billy (Mar 7, 2005)

Seriously, what's up? It's about as slow as it has ever been for me.


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## Mark (Mar 7, 2005)

Teflon Billy said:
			
		

> Seriously, what's up? It's about as slow as it has ever been for me.




I only posted to make sure it wasn't the brown acid.


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## Cyberzombie (Mar 7, 2005)

It's like trying to load up a page on the PBS website.  Or the CIA, for that matter...


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## Sammael (Mar 7, 2005)

They are pretty slow for me as well, though nowhere near as pre-server change. A memory leak, perhaps?


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## Truth Seeker (Mar 7, 2005)

I think it was the internet, when I started this morning for the news run. I was able to post one article, before my connection dried up. I had to reboot the system twice or three times, to get a clear connection.

Possible answer, a great morning rush to get on the net, could have caught servers by surprise. Or somewhere, a node was under attack *I had NOTHING to do with that * Since I got more bandwidth from Verizon, last week, I have noticed some hiccups, in the line.

Here is a little trick I use to test the net connection, while I surf, I have a internet radio on, running a constant stream to my system. That is when I know, that is how packet loss will occur. Service disruption is happening somewhere.

Just my virtual quarter thought.


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## Jdvn1 (Mar 7, 2005)

Bah.  Yes.  Very sluggish.


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## Scotley (Mar 7, 2005)

Traffic on the site doesn't seem to be particularly heavy, but it does have that 'bad old days feel'. Could something have gotten messed up by the weekend re-indexing? I thought the point of that was to speed things up?


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## barsoomcore (Mar 7, 2005)

Hong broke the internet.


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## Darkness (Mar 8, 2005)

Kind of slow. Not pre-server change slow, but still.


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## Darth K'Trava (Mar 8, 2005)

Truth Seeker said:
			
		

> ... while I surf, I have a internet radio on, running a constant stream to my system. That is when I know, that is how packet loss will occur. Service disruption is happening somewhere.




So do I. My semi-local alternative station has live streaming of their broadcasting. *semi-local being they're in Charlotte and I'm over an hour north of them. I do have something which occasionally hangs up aol and makes it quit responding.... don't know what.... something is getting disrupted somewhere.


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## Michael Morris (Mar 8, 2005)

All my sites have been slow so far this morning, so I figured it was just my ISP.


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## diaglo (Mar 8, 2005)

Michael Morris said:
			
		

> All my sites have been slow so far this morning, so I figured it was just my ISP.





the www.paizopublishing.com site loaded faster. and that is saying something as it takes forever for that site to load.


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## Mark (Mar 8, 2005)

Michael Morris said:
			
		

> All my sites have been slow so far this morning, so I figured it was just my ISP.





When in doubt, go to google.com and you should have a pretty good idea how well your connection speed is doing.

Something was done Monday morning that slowed things down and it appears that something done this morning has exacerbated the problem, because it is more sluggish today.


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## Jdvn1 (Mar 8, 2005)

Doesn't seem consistent, though.  At least, last night they were going pretty quick.


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## Mark (Mar 8, 2005)

Jdvn1 said:
			
		

> Doesn't seem consistent, though.  At least, last night they were going pretty quick.




Perhaps, then, something that when combined with a high traffic period causes sluggishness.


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## Barendd Nobeard (Mar 8, 2005)

Right now (Tuesday, 11:45 am US Central Time) they are really bad.

I was just in the Rules forum.  I clicked on the "new thread" button and it took over 30 seconds to pop up the screen.  When I was done with my post, I hit "submit" and it took 80 seconds to post (I timed it).

So, I bopped over here, where it took 45 seconds to open this thread after clicking on the title in the thread list.

Google is fine for me this morning.


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## Truth Seeker (Mar 8, 2005)

WOW!!! the LAg is bad here today, I had to fight to get one article up, five times....where is that GREMLIN!!!!


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## Cthulhu's Librarian (Mar 8, 2005)

Yes, very slow for me too. Several minutes to open most pages on enworld, the rest of the net is just fine.


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## Grazzt (Mar 8, 2005)

Barendd Nobeard said:
			
		

> Right now (Tuesday, 11:45 am US Central Time) they are really bad.




Yep 105pm EST here and this is the slowest I remember the site in a while. Im at work on a 3MB fiber connection. Everything else is fine...except this site. (Have pages open to Slashdot, NeoWin, SonicWall, Necromancer Games boards, and a handful of other places, plus streaming music from ITunes radio section....everything is speedy and normal, except ENWorld.)


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## Morrus (Mar 8, 2005)

Yep, there's definitely a slowdown.  My suspicion is that it's connected to the post index problem, although I can't be sure.  The index will be rebuilt this week - we'll see if that fixes it!


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## Turjan (Mar 8, 2005)

Yesterday it was sluggish, today it's extremely slow. I get 'server not found' messages, or it took several minutes per page to load. At the moment it's a slight bit better.


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## Crothian (Mar 8, 2005)

someone hit the gas pedal, they just sped up over the past half hour.


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## Mark (Mar 8, 2005)

Crothian said:
			
		

> someone hit the gas pedal




That'll happen as the lunch hour moves westward and drops off into the Pacific Ocean.  When it gets toward the end of the business day on the east coast of the US, it slow a bit again and that'll slide across the country...

...if, as surmised (based party on what Jdvn1 said above) the problem is worsened by increases in traffic.


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## Tom Cashel (Mar 8, 2005)

If the boards are sluggish for you, try pruning your Ignore list down to less than 250 usernames.

So much ignorance plays havoc with the software.


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## Mark (Mar 8, 2005)

Tom Cashel said:
			
		

> If the boards are sluggish for you, try pruning your Ignore list down to less than 250 usernames.
> 
> So much ignorance plays havoc with the software.





_...251..._


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## Darkness (Mar 8, 2005)

Tom Cashel said:
			
		

> If the boards are sluggish for you, try pruning your Ignore list down to less than 250 usernames.
> 
> So much ignorance plays havoc with the software.



So that's why diaglo has problems.


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## Michael Morris (Mar 8, 2005)

Morrus said:
			
		

> Yep, there's definitely a slowdown.  My suspicion is that it's connected to the post index problem, although I can't be sure.  The index will be rebuilt this week - we'll see if that fixes it!




No, the post index is only referenced during searches (I think).  That is the most recent change.

I can start the reindex at any time and let it run in the background - but that will slow the boards down the entire time the reindex processes.


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## Greylock (Mar 9, 2005)

barsoomcore said:
			
		

> Hong broke the internet.




That's the most reasonable explanation. Fetching some rope...


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## Mark (Mar 9, 2005)

Michael Morris said:
			
		

> No, the post index is only referenced during searches (I think).  That is the most recent change.
> 
> I can start the reindex at any time and let it run in the background - but that will slow the boards down the entire time the reindex processes.




Are you saying that, then, you do not know what it is that is slowing down the boards?  

Or are you saying that you have been reindexing in the background already and that is what is slowing down the boards during peak hours?

Your post is cryptic in that it contests what Morrus says but immediately follows with the caveat, "(I think)", indicating that you don't know for sure if what he is saying is correct, and therefore what anyone else is saying might be correct or incorrect.

Perhaps starting with what *is* known will help matters out?

The boards were shut down on Friday (and on into Saturday) in an attempt to reindex the boards that ultimately did not achieve a satisfactory result.  Correct?

This reindexing will have to happen again in order to get the search function to work, at all?  Better than it does now?  With more than a single search parameter?  To a level that it will not cause problems with the rest of the functionality of the site?  It doesn't really need to be done to get things to work now, it's just a routine maintenence process that requires greater time and resources to run, the longer you put it off?

Is the reindexing an all or nothing process?  (Did the reindexing on Friday night and into Saturday actually accomplish some of the task and can be restarted where it left off?  Or does the process need to be completed when it is started for the process to be  of any use at all?)

Are there other things that have been done behind the scenes of the boards, specifically on Monday morning/late Sunday night that, in your opinion, could be the caue of the current slow down in functionality?  Were things done at all, regardless of whether or not, in your opinion, they could cause the current slow down?

Anyway, there's a punch list of questions for you to answer either to yourself or in the thread that I hope will help work through the process of figuring out a solution to the current board slowness.  I know you would dislike as much as anyone if all of the time, money, and effort of getting the new servers culminated in having boards that were, during peak hours, just as much a pain in the butt as they were before all of the time, money, and effort.  I wish you well in your efforts to fix the current problem.


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## IronWolf (Mar 9, 2005)

Michael Morris said:
			
		

> No, the post index is only referenced during searches (I think).  That is the most recent change.




Sitting in the armchair and looking in... (i.e. it is always easier to be the armchair sysadmin than the one doing the work), if you only rebuilt the search indexes that shouldn't have any effect on the boards short of the search function.  But if it was the indexes on the table(s) themselves and the indexes were lost then that could impact the speed of the boards as the pointers that help speed DB queries have been lost (until they are recreated).


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## Thornir Alekeg (Mar 11, 2005)

The other day when this thread was started, I had noticed a little bit of a slowdown, but not that much.  Today however the boards seem almost as slow as they were before the server upgrade.  Other sites I have visited have not seemed noticably slower, so I do not believe the problem is at my end.


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## EricNoah (Mar 11, 2005)

Yeah, there's something seriously wrong with the site this morning...


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## Thornir Alekeg (Mar 11, 2005)

Ahhh!  Much better all of the sudden.  Whatever you guys did, thanks.


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## reveal (Mar 11, 2005)

I've noticed that it's sluggish when I go from one forum to another, or click on a link to read a post, but it's _really_ slow when I click to reply and try to post my reply.


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## DaveMage (Mar 11, 2005)

Yeah, very slow here too.


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## Thornir Alekeg (Mar 11, 2005)

Back to ultra slow again


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## Gez (Mar 11, 2005)

ENWorld is slower now than it was ever, to me. From time to time, people would start threads just like this one, and I was wondering what they were speaking about.

When the move to the new server was over, I never really felt the "lightning fast speed" people were raving about. ENW has always been fast enough -- sometimes, the pages took a long time to load, but they began loading fast enough. With the new server, I noticed a slight increase in speed, and it was very nice.

But now -- for the first time, indeed, I totally agree with the thread. It's slow as an asthmatic snail that's trying to climb on special snail-killer SnailNails (tm) nails while a pixie maniac is trying to break its shell with a diminutive hammer, by a misty day.


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## Squirrel Nutkin (Mar 11, 2005)

Gez said:
			
		

> But now -- for the first time, indeed, I totally agree with the thread. It's slow as an asthmatic snail that's trying to climb on special snail-killer SnailNails (tm) nails while a pixie maniac is trying to break its shell with a diminutive hammer, by a misty day.



I wish it was moving that quickly for me!


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## Empress (Mar 11, 2005)

Gez said:
			
		

> ENWorld is slower now than it was ever, to me. From time to time, people would start threads just like this one, and I was wondering what they were speaking about.
> 
> When the move to the new server was over, I never really felt the "lightning fast speed" people were raving about. ENW has always been fast enough -- sometimes, the pages took a long time to load, but they began loading fast enough. With the new server, I noticed a slight increase in speed, and it was very nice.
> 
> But now -- for the first time, indeed, I totally agree with the thread. It's slow as an asthmatic snail that's trying to climb on special snail-killer SnailNails (tm) nails while a pixie maniac is trying to break its shell with a diminutive hammer, by a misty day.



 *g*

So it isn't always so slow? When I first came here, it was _very_ slow, I thought. 

Now it's adequate, though.


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## EricNoah (Mar 15, 2005)

I hate to jinx it, but today, noonish, it is running pretty darn quick.


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## Henry (Mar 15, 2005)

Now that the majority of the Search Indexing is over, I'm hoping the slowness trend is leaving off now. Today and last night, it's been lightning-fast for me, and I'm only on a 128k connection! Last night, I was on a dial-up and posts to threads were happening 3 seconds after I sent them!


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## reveal (Mar 15, 2005)

It's been faster in the last two days then it's been in the last two weeks.


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## Jdvn1 (Mar 15, 2005)

MM said something about upgrading something or something when the post index is rebuilt.  That should make it a bit speedier.


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## Ao the Overkitty (Mar 16, 2005)

In all honesty, I never actually noticed any of this recent slowness.  Might just be because I'm on a 56K modem and don't notice slowness.


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## Darth K'Trava (Mar 21, 2005)

Henry said:
			
		

> Now that the majority of the Search Indexing is over, I'm hoping the slowness trend is leaving off now. Today and last night, it's been lightning-fast for me, and I'm only on a 128k connection! Last night, I was on a dial-up and posts to threads were happening 3 seconds after I sent them!




They are back to quick.... I think it was during the reindexing where I had to click stuff twice to get the page to load..... 

You must be on broadband on a regular basis, Henry...... So am I. It's the best thing there is!   I hate using dialup after the speed of broadband..... had to a few times with the comp in the shop and having to drive 30mins to a friend's house to use his dialup to check email.....   It was time to grab a few Snickers bars and quote, "Not going anywhere for awhile?"


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## Darth K'Trava (Mar 21, 2005)

Ao the Overkitty said:
			
		

> In all honesty, I never actually noticed any of this recent slowness.  Might just be because I'm on a 56K modem and don't notice slowness.




Because it's always there?   

"Been there, done that, bought several t-shirts"


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## diaglo (Mar 21, 2005)

slow going for me this morning.


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## Turjan (Mar 21, 2005)

For me, it was slow during most of the weekend, but this morning is terrible. I even get complete timeouts.


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## Allanon (Mar 21, 2005)

Yup, very slow. This morning all was fine but now between me clicking a thread and it opening I can almost see myself aging in the reflection of my monitor


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## Jdvn1 (Mar 21, 2005)

I didn't think it was much slower than the last week or so...


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## Mark (Mar 21, 2005)

There's a new "slow" thread in town - 

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=125383

I don't think this forum is big enough for the both of us.

(Mods, feel free to close, please.)


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