A petition to speed up the forums

[Angel of Mercy]

Hey everyone, I'm from the sinfest forum, and I've started the original version of this thread there. Hopefully there will soon be one of this thread in every forum.

We've all seen how slow the forums have become, and I know most of us are not real happy with having to wait ten minutes to open a topic. So here's what I propose:

If enough people say they want it too, maybe the keenspot admins (moderators?) will find a way to speed the forums up, or at least explain to us why they're running so slow now. This thread and the others like it are dedicated to that purpose.

Post your replies to the slow forums in here ladies and gent's, and maybe we can get the forums to speed up a little bit.

[Zefram]

Yes! The forums are dreadfully slow! It's frustrating to have to wait for so long to get a thread open! What's up? Unfortunately, the slowness of the site inhibits me from reading the board more often.

John

[beuysgirl]

here here! or... hear here! or here hear! or hear hear. whatever. not digging the slowness.

[Gottverlassen]

it took over **170 seconds** to load this thread. that isn't slow. that unusable. (an07ther suxxess st0ry 4 tha 0p3n s0urc3 d00dz!!)

all of keenspot is known to be dreadfully slow at times, but the messageboards are actually painful. at least the new color scheme is a welcome improvement. much more readable than the white background.

[jawwa]

Obviously the Keenspot technical gurus have not made the forums slow on purpose. There's a problem, and they're trying to sort it out.

Unfortunately they're trying to sort it out WITH PRAYER. Well, far be it from me to mock another man's faith. But I think the goat's blood from the sacrifice is making the server work worse, not better.

John

[kingrollo]

Well, all open source controversy aside, the very same forums (fora?) worked fine last week, so it's the server issue not the forum code. Unless it's a scalability issue (okay, egghead mode off). Maybe the new colour scheme is so understated and stylish that thousands of new members overloaded the server! Or maybe the goat blood somehow got into the circuits and silicon chips, just making matters that much worse.

Two thoughts: (1) it must have taken the petition guy _hours_ to post on all the forums, and (2) there's white anti-aliasing fuzz around the Keenspot logo. Hmm.

But seeing as we're here.. esteemed Bobbins creator, your thoughts (if any) on the highly amusing parody of yourself and your strip? And was this: http://www.bobbins.org/d/20011020.html really the first episode of Scary-Go-Round? And is it just me, or does Rachel really look like Paula Marshall, minor US TV celeb? (http://www.eonline.com/Facts/People/Bio ... 84,00.html)

[soupcore]

i agree, the forums are horribly slow... argh.


on another note, rachel looks exactly like my ex girlfriend.. it's creepy.

[gwalla]

On 2002-04-09 13:44, kingrollo wrote:
Well, all open source controversy aside, the very same forums (fora?) worked fine last week, so it's the server issue not the forum code. Unless it's a scalability issue (okay, egghead mode off).

The official word seems to be that phpBB is just slower, because all pages (including thread pages) are now CGIs and require a database lookup, while UBB stored threads in flat HTML files (which was also the source of instability--two people posting at the same time to a thread could cause corruption, since there was no file locking going on, unlike a database where all entries are individually locked).

[jawwa]

I thought the parody was piteously unfunny. But I know who Bas Tage is, Chris Crosby told me ages ago.

Is that 20th of October strip the first <b>Scary Go Round</b>? You'll have the chance to compare on Saturday when I'll be running the first of two special 'pilot' previews of the new strip.

Paula Marshall as Rachel? No way friends. Rather than a hairsprayed TV queen:



Rachel is a punk rock darlin':



YES!

[*Kludge*]

On 2002-04-09 18:26, gwalla wrote:
The official word seems to be that phpBB is just slower, because all pages (including thread pages) are now CGIs and require a database lookup, while UBB stored threads in flat HTML files.

That would be the case if it wasn't for the fact that AFAIK, the keenspot server isn't running mod_perl - and even if it was, I'm not sure UBB can take advantage of it.

The short and long of this is: the executable that runs PHP scripts is built into the web server, and only has to be started once. The executable that runs the perl scripts that UBB uses isn't built into the web server, and has to be started every time someone calls a script. So - the time it takes to start 1 process versus the time it takes to start lots of processes.

In theory, this overhead can put a greater load on the webserver than generating a page each time with PHP does.

So now you (possibly) know.

Keith "and now back to discussions of Weezer" Lawrence

[kingrollo]

Ha.. I thought they'd just changed the colour scheme, I didn't even realise they'd gone from UBB to phpBB. That kinda invalidates my thoughts on the matter D'oh. Anyway, it must be something to do with compiling the data to create the thread pages, cos this 'Reply' page only took 0.005358 seconds. I timed it with my atomic watch. Whatever it is, I hope they get it sorted soon, cos it's like wading through virtual treacle at the moment.

As for Ms Marshall.. well, you know publicity shots, she doesn't always look so hairsprayed. But I didn't want to spend too much of my work day surfing for pictures of Paula Marshall wearing glasses and looking like Rachel. I'm now thinking it might be the clothes though. I dunno. There's something.

And for some reason the person in the other picture looks kinda familiar. Can't imagine why though.

[kingrollo]

Lest you think that the adminfolk aren't tearing their hair out also:

http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=10361

Okay, now I'll shut up.

[gwalla]

On 2002-04-10 01:37, *Kludge* wrote:
That would be the case if it wasn't for the fact that AFAIK, the keenspot server isn't running mod_perl - and even if it was, I'm not sure UBB can take advantage of it.

The short and long of this is: the executable that runs PHP scripts is built into the web server, and only has to be started once. The executable that runs the perl scripts that UBB uses isn't built into the web server, and has to be started every time someone calls a script. So - the time it takes to start 1 process versus the time it takes to start lots of processes.

In theory, this overhead can put a greater load on the webserver than generating a page each time with PHP does.

But you're ignoring the major point: while calling a script in UBB may have more overhead, you call scripts *less often*. Thread pages in UBB are flat HTML files, served up like any other HTML file, with no preprocessing necessary--all of the modification is done when a new post is submitted. In phpBB, however, just loading a thread page (not even posting to it) has to run a script (which has to access an SQL database). Even with the script preloaded, the processor and I/O-access overhead of running a CGI is more than that of serving up a flat file.

[*Kludge*]

On 2002-04-10 19:51, gwalla wrote:
But you're ignoring the major point: while calling a script in UBB may have more overhead, you call scripts *less often*. Thread pages in UBB are flat HTML files, served up like any other HTML file, with no preprocessing necessary--all of the modification is done when a new post is submitted. In phpBB, however, just loading a thread page (not even posting to it) has to run a script (which has to access an SQL database). Even with the script preloaded, the processor and I/O-access overhead of running a CGI is more than that of serving up a flat file.

It's not always as cut-and-dried as that. Although it's quicker to serve pure HTML, it's often not that much quicker. Static pages don't magically teleport themselves from the server's disk to the browser. If the bottleneck is disk I/O (as it often is), the overhead in processing the file before it goes out of the door, so to speak, can often be negligible.

Don't underestimate the number and cost of process startups, either. Remember that while you're viewing a topic on UBB, although you're just getting a static page there are probably 20 people on the Sinfest and CRFH boards posting and causing process start overheads.

What I don't have at the moment, however, is any figures to back up my assertions, and I'm too busy to go and make some. So I will concede that you may be right. But it's not as simple as you make out, and I would place a small amount of money on the PHP processing overhead not being responsible for the slowdown - not least because when phpBB was first installed, it seemed to me to be going 2 or three times faster than UBB was, and an order of magnitude faster than it's going now.

[gwalla]

On 2002-04-11 01:41, *Kludge* wrote:
It's not always as cut-and-dried as that. Although it's quicker to serve pure HTML, it's often not that much quicker. Static pages don't magically teleport themselves from the server's disk to the browser. If the bottleneck is disk I/O (as it often is), the overhead in processing the file before it goes out of the door, so to speak, can often be negligible.

I believe the bottleneck is database lookup overhead.

[DreamSerpent_v2.0]

wow i didn't know Rachel was based on Hugo!