Site Stalling

[Gerk]

Gi folks, as reported in the shout box some of us have been experiencing stalls when using the board.  If you have this issue please report it in here around the time it happens if you don't mind.  I know what is causing it (for any geeks that care there's something whacky happening with PHP cache) but not sure exactly how to fix it yet, so more evidence will help me track down the issues.

Thanks in advance, and hoping that the small tweak I made already resolved the issue ...

Gerk

[NickT]

Hey Buddy!

I was getting lockout after I chose to play a file from the studio A list. If I crazy clicked on refresh about 4 or 5 times, it would let go and let me get on my way.

Thanks!

NickT

[napoleonboot]

Hi, I have visited a few times in the last handful of days and I though the problem was solved, but I just experienced it again about 5 minutes before this post. The browser was just spinning for 10's of seconds (until I killed it), failing to connect or start loading a page. At the time 32 users online (2 members, 31 guests). After I closed browser and reopened it I was able to load a page with the browser connecting after spinning for about 4-5 seconds. Now 5 minutes later pages are loading fast like usual.

George

[snowdoguk]

same story, just had the first stall since Mark posted his small tweak fix. Took about 5 mins to get back in. Now business as usual again

[Gerk]

Hmm ok I had made another couple of tweaks, has anyone seen this is the last week?  This seems to be a tough one to pin down

[snowdoguk]

Hmm ok I had made another couple of tweaks, has anyone seen this is the last week?  This seems to be a tough one to pin down

On Saturday evening (Central Eur Time) the site was almost unusable Mark. Could get in for one action and then it would stall again

[Gerk]

Hmm dang.  Ok.  The strange thing is that it only happens with this particular site, there are other sites on the same server that have no issues.  I'll keep plugging at it.

[Gerk]

I've made a couple more changes ... you might have to logout and back in again (changed up some stuff with the site cookies).  I'm hoping this resolves the issues.  If not I have other ideas but I don't like having to go there as it would involve disabling the html5 based play feature which I think it the current biggest culprit for these stalls ...

Please let me know if you see more site stalls.

[Gerk]

Question ... when you experience the site stalls does it always relate to the mp3 player button?  It seems to for me ... so trying to figure out if this is what's causing the issue.

[snowdoguk]

Question ... when you experience the site stalls does it always relate to the mp3 player button?  It seems to for me ... so trying to figure out if this is what's causing the issue.

Not always for me but started off like that a while ago, sometimes just can't log on at all. Other times when I'm in, I want to navigate to another forum or page and then it stalls. Sometimes I try to play an mp3 and it won't play. Lot's of different reasons

[Gerk]

I think I figured out the issue ... the MP3 file preview using HTML5 source tag seems to be the root of the issue.  The technical details are that because browsers try to call them all concurrently and download them it's causing a race condition with PHP's session file locking ... i.e. a whole bunch of things are trying to access the session file on the hard disk at the same time, so when these long timeouts happen it's because there's a bunch of things in a queue waiting to access the file and you can't get out of it until they are all done.  On some pages because of the big list of files at the top that can mean that it was trying to download ALL of the full MP3 files before it allows you to continue.  So if/when you hit one of these locked session files it would have to wait and download one at a time until they were all done.

I'm going to work on a new way to get those previews back up and running that won't trigger this file locking issue!  It was not limited to just pages with MP3 previews (it could happen with anything with a bunch of attachments it can preview, like images) but it was not widespread until we moved to this new server with a more modern version of PHP.

It may take a bit of time for all your browser cache to clear, but once it does I suspect that the stalls will be gone.  If anyone wants to be proactive about it you can look up how to clear your browser cache for this whole site.  Best to remove cache and cookies (you will have to log in again).

[Gerk]

So more small changes which hopefully resolve this file locking / session madness.  Going to leave the MP3 player off for now until I know this has resolved the stalling issues.  Since these last changes I haven't had a single stall .. so crossing my fingers that it was resolved and once I know that I will figure out a better way to have an audio player for previewing purposes...

[snowdoguk]

So more small changes which hopefully resolve this file locking / session madness.  Going to leave the MP3 player off for now until I know this has resolved the stalling issues.  Since these last changes I haven't had a single stall .. so crossing my fingers that it was resolved and once I know that I will figure out a better way to have an audio player for previewing purposes...

will keep you posted   thanks for the deep dive and hard work

[Gerk]

Cool, let me know.  The site is super zoomy for me now ... but time will tell.

[napoleonboot]

Hi it stalled again for me about 10 minutes ago, and became accessible 5 minutes later. The only other registered use on at the time was snowdog.

around 20:30 UK time on Saturday 18th April

George