Open apology to JaguarPC --- Nukers, Bloggers, Ppl with XLM/RSS feeds, please read!!!

[Vin DSL]

I posted this on another site, and thought it only fair to copy 'n' paste it here. Take it for what it's worth.

Originally posted on a Y.A.N.S. [Yet Another Nuke Site]

First of all, this has NOTHING to do with [unnamed Y.A.N.S.]. I just bring this topic up for discussion to help my fellow Nukers.

My site has been 'crashing' off 'n' on for the last few weeks. That is, it either takes 200-300 seconds for the pages to generate, or I get a DNS error. Other times it works fantastic --- like 1/10 of a second to generate pages, only to be followed several hours later by 200-300 second page generation times --- basically locked up or dead to the world. Ppl don't hang around for 5 seconds waiting for a page to come up, let alone 5 minutes...

I thought it was my web host's fault. I contacted them many times. Sometimes it was an unclosed or runaway process or MySQL query, but mostly it was a mystery to 'them.' So, I started doing digs and diagnostics on my server. I found nothing out of the ordinary [either].

Last night, my site was doing it's thing again. I had been working for 23 hours and just got home, so I wasn't thinking 'normal.' However, this was a good thing. All I wanted to do is go to bed, but my damn site was down.

I started thinking, "There isn't anything wrong with my site." Server load was like .013, so there wasn't anything wrong with anyone else's site on my shared web hosting server either. WTF???

I started thinking, "Hey, I have a couple of RSS news feeds coming in from Nuke Cops and Computer Cops. I wonder if those sites are down. So, I checked it out. WOW!!! They were both down --- nothing --- no 404's, 500's, nothing. Dead --- gone --- zilch...

At this point, I couldn't even log into my site using PHP-Nuke, so I went over to the server and brought up phpMyAdmin. I went into my MySQL PHP-Nuke database and deleted the RSS feeds from Nuke Cops and Computer Cops, and bada bing, bada boom, my site came back up immediately with sub-second page generations.

CLIFF NOTE VERSION: Bad XLM/RSS feeds WILL lock your PHP-Nuke site up solid if 'they' are having problems with 'their' servers. There doesn't have to be anything wrong on YOUR end for this to happen.

[Gwaihir]

IIRC this issue was the reason MySQL was downgraded back to 3.x, right? So there's nothing wrong with MySQL 4 after all? That would be great news, I'd love to get MySQL 4 back.

[Joshua Clinard]

Interesting. It all comes into the light!

[Raven]

To my understanding mysql4 has a bug in it that causes tables to frequently crash.

[Vin DSL]

Originally posted by Joshua Clinard
Interesting. It all comes into the light!

Yeah, this has been an eye-opener for me. I've only been running a Nuked site for a month or so. First of all, I heard how slow Nuke would be on dialup. That was bull. I also heard how hard it is on server resources. That was bull too. Nobody ever told me about bad RSS news feeds locking up your site though, and that's no bull. If their system is down, it kills your site too.

I learned my lesson! According to my web monitoring service, my site was down for over 10 hours, and it had nothing to do with JagPC. That's why I posted this. I can only wonder how many other ppl are having similar problems and assume its JagPC's fault.

Anyway, my friggin' PHP-Nuke site has been blazingly fast since I took the news feeds off; unbelievably fast. Really! It's simply amazing. It's generating pages, on average, under 1/10 of a second.

One good thing about all this is, it has allowed me to dig into PHP-Nuke code. I accepted a moderator job on one of the 'big boy' Nuke sites yesterday, so that makes 3 sites I'm modding at now, plus working 60-80 hours a week at my 'real' job. Maybe I won't have so much time to harass the troops...

[Vin DSL]

Originally posted by Gwaihir
IIRC this issue was the reason MySQL was downgraded back to 3.x, right? So there's nothing wrong with MySQL 4 after all? That would be great news, I'd love to get MySQL 4 back.

I wouldn't bank on there being no problems with MySQL 4. I think that was a seperate issue. Things went to hell in a handbasket immediately when they upgraded to it.

All I know is everything on my site is screaming right now (Neutron). I hope they leave everything alone for a while...