problems getting on this site.

[gtfpv]

i have problems getting on this site ( daily) . i know it isnt this computer because i try with my i'phone also .
its never been a reliable site , nowadays it's far worse than ever . other sites are easy to get into AFF always seems to be a random chance lately.

[gregaust]

Yes same here mate , it's not you. Last 2 weeks has been bit weird :(

[kenz]

http://www.fordforums.com.au/showthread.php?t=11297614

[gtfpv]

RUSS ya gotta fix this mate . playing up every day , dropping out , not allowing posting , freezing . not allowing login . every day . sometimes i just quit and go to other sites of interest .

[Geez Louise]

Did you even read the thread that was posted re: Outage?

Russ and the admin team are doing the best they can and they are working on the issues. Have a little patience.

[russellw]

As noted in the thread that has been linked to, there have been some intermittent issues of late that have had a lot of effort put into them in order to resolve the issues. All of the monitoring data indicates that these issues are resolved and I am watching the server performance closely.

However, if you are having constant issues then there is something else wrong as the server up-time this last week (apart from deliberate down-time) has been over 98.8% and any deliberate down time has been late night and early morning to avoid disruption.

Considering the post counts per day are still at the same level they were it is obviously more of an isolated issue than a site wide one.

I'd suggest that you clear cache and cookies as a starting point but also provide something more of a clue than in your posts above as it is somewhat difficult to actually analyse what is really happening without knowing the details of the issue.

Russ

[mik]

yep i have been getting it to , i have put it down to the server is crowded or something, it seems a little better this week, seems to happen for a shorter period, i try it on both my pc and lap top same results, have done the cookie thing, my young brother is a network tech , he tells me that server software is very problematic, it must be a fair pain Russel with so many users?

[gtfpv]

Originally Posted by russellw

As noted in the thread that has been linked to, there have been some intermittent issues of late that have had a lot of effort put into them in order to resolve the issues. All of the monitoring data indicates that these issues are resolved and I am watching the server performance closely.

However, if you are having constant issues then there is something else wrong as the server up-time this last week (apart from deliberate down-time) has been over 98.8% and any deliberate down time has been late night and early morning to avoid disruption.

Considering the post counts per day are still at the same level they were it is obviously more of an isolated issue than a site wide one.

I'd suggest that you clear cache and cookies as a starting point but also provide something more of a clue than in your posts above as it is somewhat difficult to actually analyse what is really happening without knowing the details of the issue.

Russ

thanks russ . i'll let you know exactly whats wrong if anything else happens . cheers .
and yes i have read the other thread . the reason i started this is because it is current as russ mentioned the issues were resolved . today the site is working great for me . yesterday i posted a reply to a thread and couldnot post it .

[gregaust]

Has been better this week. What happens for me is can be real slow or nothing happens . Then i get the message below . Just happened a little while ago, tried few minutes later is ok .. Thanks for all your hard work guys .


There seems to have been a slight problem with the database.
Please try again by pressing the refresh button in your browser.

An E-Mail has been dispatched to our Technical Staff, who you can also contact if the problem persists.

We apologise for any inconvenience.

[gtfpv]

just an update for you Russ . today the site is extremely fast and accurate for me. I dont know if the repairs have been an ongoing evolving thing . but if so it seems to be fixed ( or related to late night heavy traffic ) . hopefully fixed . cheers .

[wulos]

Believe me when I say that there has been quite a significant amount of work going on behind the scenes in order to keep things running.
One of the things that many may not be aware of is that the version of vb that we are using here on AFF is (according to vb) 'not compatible' with some of the software apps used by 'smartphone' technologies, for online viewing. With the increasing usage of smartphone technologies, comes a lot of website unknowns....
There are a few other areas that we are taking a good hard look at as well. As a sidenote, many of the adjustments / tweaks we've been working on has made some overall improvements in terms of site performance, which should bode well for keeping AFF the premier auto related forum on the web.

[gtfpv]

Originally Posted by wulos

Believe me when I say that there has been quite a significant amount of work going on behind the scenes in order to keep things running.
One of the things that many may not be aware of is that the version of vb that we are using here on AFF is (according to vb) 'not compatible' with some of the software apps used by 'smartphone' technologies, for online viewing. With the increasing usage of smartphone technologies, comes a lot of website unknowns....
There are a few other areas that we are taking a good hard look at as well. As a sidenote, many of the adjustments / tweaks we've been working on has made some overall improvements in terms of site performance, which should bode well for keeping AFF the premier auto related forum on the web.

thanks Wulos. i cant ever remember a time when the forum speed - performance has been any better than it is right now . thanks guys .

[Riksta]

Sorry for the bump, and apologies if you guys know about it already, but I figure that if you don't, you can't fix it!

The last couple of nights I've been having issues with the site timing out on me, and not loading. A couple of times it loads up the main page, but when I go to enter a section it will then time out on me.

If its related to the previous issues and still being worked on, all good.

[SLO AU XR8]

I've had the same drama Riksta...

[Jason[98.EL]]

same here I amsure that russ is workinng on it though

Jason

[motorcycles4eva]

i've had problems lately trying to get onto the site too.. but unlike some, i'm patient and try again the next day.. going to another site?? yea so what.. but having a dummy spit.... come on.. this site is probably the best out there.. so many users.. for sure you'll get a glitch every now and then but who cares..
glitch or no glitch im sure the admin people know about it and are doing what they can..

[russellw]

We do indeed know about it and as mentioned in the relocation thread we are in the process of preparing to migrate to a new server as part of the solution.

However, we also want to identify the underlying cause for the slow downs that are happening so that we fix those rather than just mask them by throwing more hardware at them.

I can say that between 2030-2040 on Monday and then again at 21:40 last night we are seeing big spikes in the number of transactions per second as shown in the data below. As this seems to coincide with large numbers of guests, my current view is that we are seeing activity from bad bots that simply keep reading multiple pages until we run out of available processes.



Basically any time the transactions per second (the purple line) gets over 400, the server is going to be unhappy and by 500 it will almost certainly crash apache. The 0300 and 0400 ones are caused by background maintenance tasks which are deliberate but the ones at 20:30 and 22:40 are not. The fact that this also coincides with high reads per second (the red line) indicates that bot activity may well be the cause.

Cheers
Russ

[gcg2503]

Thanks for all the hard work behind the scenes Russ & Wulos

PS: loving the tech analysis above. Reminds me when I met with a risk guy at work and he was walking me through Monte Carlo Computational Algorithms!

[Jason[98.EL]]

Russ

I find that when itry to get into the private oze area and DM area that it seems to go slow all the time not sure if this is related though

also it just had a 30 second slow spot as well to get into the site support area with only

Currently Active Users: 534 (285 members and 249 guests)

Jason

p.s keep up the great behind the scenes work

[NC1183]

Hey Russ, I have been getting the time-out issue during the day at times too.

Also the site doesn't seem to remember me, ie. It doesn't show which threads I've looked at and is a couple of visits old where it says i last visited.

[russellw]

We'll be making some small changes throughout the day so there may be the odd white page or delay in page loads.

Cheers
Russ

[RG]

Originally Posted by russellw

We'll be making some small changes throughout the day so there may be the odd white page or delay in page loads.

Cheers
Russ

What like this one?

Looks good.

[Mark^^]

I just get no connection - white empty page from about 9.30pm onwards and has been happening for a couple of weeks. No other website is having the same issue.

[JC]

Originally Posted by gtfpv

RUSS ya gotta fix this mate . playing up every day , dropping out , not allowing posting , freezing . not allowing login . every day . sometimes i just quit and go to other sites of interest .

What? There are other sites??

Same issues here; I just keep trying till I get on, and in between times I go to eBay - it's costing me a fortune!

[russellw]

We've made a number of changes tonight as follows:

1. We have removed a number of the less useful bots from having access to the site which should stop them from being able to flood the site with read requests.

2. We have also enabled compression on served pages. There is some performance hit to doing this but it should be offset with faster page load times which (in turn) means each process worker is freed up quicker.

3. Changed our method of caching database requests to a (theoretically) more efficient one.

We'll see how these changes go when I review the logs over the next couple of days.

Any anecdotal feedback of improved / worsened page load speeds would also be welcomed.

Cheers
Russ

[hopk88]

yea i have had a few freezes from about 10.30pm-11pm the last 2 nights where i go to refresh and it says page cannot be displayed and it stays like that for about 15mins or so?

I know you guys are working on it and i have had no problems tonight other then a few longer load times but the site has been good.

Loving the site guys

[SLO AU XR8]

I haven't had a drama today Russ. Banning the bots seems to have worked for me (touchwood).