APOLYTON needs a BIGGER house!

GhengisFarb™ · August 5, 2002, 12:19

These last two weeks I can hardly ever log on or post to the forums because it keeps going to the screen: "Too many users logged on, please try again in a few minutes". Is there anything we can do to help build some room additions to Poly's house?

(It's really annoying when you just typed an intricate reply and you lose everything you typed because there were too many people on the forum already)

Solver · August 5, 2002, 12:45

Besides adding my whine that the problem is annoying, I can give you a tip of always copying your reply to the Clipboard before posting.

Q Classic · August 5, 2002, 13:25

it has happened a lot recently. perhaps 21k is a bit too big for the servers right now ?

MarkG · August 5, 2002, 13:33

it just needs a better system administrator

Gatekeeper · August 5, 2002, 13:45

Markos:

Is it true that SETTLER doesn't provide any tech service?

Gatekeeper

MarkG · August 5, 2002, 14:01

We are renting a dedicated server. this means that the company from which we have rented is only obliged for the well begin of it's hardware and it's net connection. support is offered on basic things, not a full technical support

Therefore, the only time something was done by the company staff on the server the last 3.5 months was when a manual reboot was needed. The rest(for better or worse) was all Dan and me.

ixnay · August 5, 2002, 14:57

Yeesh, I got that message several times this morning while trying to get here, and there were only 180 people on the forums...

GhengisFarb™ · August 5, 2002, 16:21

Quote:

Originally posted by ixnay37
Yeesh, I got that message several times this morning while trying to get here, and there were only 180 people on the forums...

Yeah, that's sorta at the root of my concern.

First, I'm not complaining about Apolyton, Apolyton is the unquestioned crown jewel of Civ sites. What I am concerned with, is if we are having problems, what can we do to correct them? Seeing as PTW is going to cause a demand for customization, shouldn't we expect more hits after it's release (with multiplayer, people will probably want more units/scenarios and leader graphics as those will be more accesible with the supposed new options with PTW)

I'm not any good with programming, but if Apoly ever needs any 3d graphics, etc I'd be more than happy to help, and I'm sure there are some Apoly members that could help with other stuff.

Again, don't mean to whine, I just see a potential problem down the road....

Ari Rahikkala · August 5, 2002, 18:45

Needs a better sysadmin? Maybe it just needs a simple change to the settings of the database. Something like increasing the number of possible concurrent connections and shortening the timeout. That should at least take care of the "stuck" connections Markos told about. Then again, it would also bloat the error logs and cause other funky problems...

Sirotnikov · August 5, 2002, 21:28

TRue, I was very upset by this.

It's one thing when the forum is off line. Then i know it's bad and i wait for a day.

But today was very bad.

It seemed ok, but every second post (and my posts tend to be VERY long) got eaten up.

So i got very very frustrated in the last two days.

My posts were disappearing in scores.

At one time I almost made a decision to leave this place for good.

Seriously, one thing is unreachable, another thing is when the service plays pranks on you.

Highly irritating.

Sirotnikov · August 5, 2002, 21:57

Sorry if i come off like a jerk from my post, but it was very very irritating.

i understand however that you're all humans and the servers make errors too

if there are seirous problems, i'd suggest shutting downt he site and fixing them. because otherwise, we are "battling" the site forums, which leaves us more angry, that if we knew that the site is off now, but will be 100% later.

Urban Ranger · August 5, 2002, 23:37

Maybe if there is a way to set a time out for our guests

Urban Ranger · August 5, 2002, 23:40

Or maybe if you can write a bot to kill all the stuck connections

GhengisFarb™ · August 6, 2002, 01:27

I say we contact Bill Gates of Geek civilization and demand he give up the msn server for Apolyton's sole use or risk war with the Great Bananas.......

........after all our words are backed with nuclear weapons.

St Leo · August 6, 2002, 02:10

(It's really annoying when you just typed an intricate reply and you lose everything you typed because there were too many people on the forum already)

Switch to Opera and you'll never have that problem. It doesn't forget stuff when you press back.

Gatekeeper · August 6, 2002, 02:53

Quote:

Originally posted by MarkG
We are renting a dedicated server. this means that the company from which we have rented is only obliged for the well begin of it's hardware and it's net connection. support is offered on basic things, not a full technical support

Therefore, the only time something was done by the company staff on the server the last 3.5 months was when a manual reboot was needed. The rest(for better or worse) was all Dan and me.

So, in essence, SETTLER is responsible for the hardware (server) and its connection to the greater Internet while you and Dan have to keep the software running properly?

'Poly runs on Red Hat, right? Just curious ... seems some folks think RH isn't that great and that MySQL (or whatever) is better. (I'm obviously not familiar with the "ins-and-outs" of just what constitutes good software for forums.)

Anyway, you and Dan are the twine that keeps this baler together.

Here's to continued good luck!

Gatekeeper

MarkG · August 6, 2002, 03:15

some corrections:

"settler" is just the name we gave to our server, not the company we rent it from
"redhat" is a distribution of linux(operating system)
"mysql" is a database server application(aka daemon)

notyoueither · August 6, 2002, 05:23

OK, but where is the bottle neck that causes the too many connections message?

Can you correct that?

Eli · August 6, 2002, 07:51

Is the problem in the number of users that are online, or the number of Apolyton windows that are loading?

Urban Ranger · August 6, 2002, 09:56

SDMB eats posts all the time too.

Solver · August 6, 2002, 10:08

Eli, generally every window you're loading in is sending a separate request to the database.

Panag · August 6, 2002, 14:14

hi ,

what happens to all those email's that have been dispatched to "our" technical staff , ...

have a nice day

Ari Rahikkala · August 6, 2002, 14:27

If vBulletin uses persistent database connections, maybe you should try SQL Relay ( http://www.firstworks.com/sqlrelay.html )? It does connection pooling, which PHP (AFAIK) doesn't have support for. Should slow general loading times very slightly but make the database work a lot smoother.

Ari Rahikkala · August 6, 2002, 14:28

Quote:

Originally posted by panag
hi ,

what happens to all those email's that have been dispatched to "our" technical staff , ...

have a nice day

They go into the Great Bit Bucket in the sky

.

Panag · August 6, 2002, 14:33

Quote:

Originally posted by LightEning

They go into the Great Bit Bucket in the sky

.

hi ,

grrrrrrrr

there was a time today that apolyton was out of the sky , and THAT aint fun , ......

, Mark , Dan , what about asking a proxy (8080) from a firm or so , like AOL (no not those) but something like bell , yahoo , so that when your server is down those ones could pick up , ....

have a nice day

Ari Rahikkala · August 6, 2002, 15:39

Quote:

Originally posted by panag

hi ,

grrrrrrrr

there was a time today that apolyton was out of the sky , and THAT aint fun , ......

, Mark , Dan , what about asking a proxy (8080) from a firm or so , like AOL (no not those) but something like bell , yahoo , so that when your server is down those ones could pick up , ....

have a nice day

Probably wouldn't be too useful. Apolyton has a lot of dynamic and personalised content, and proxies don't like that. If it was completely transparent and could immediately take over when Apolyton goes down (and Apolyton rarely actually goes down - the database usually has only temporary problems) it could perhaps keep some of the parts of the site outside the forums viewable, but not much more. It would basically be more trouble than it's worth.

Lefty Scaevola · August 6, 2002, 16:24

The server likes me. It always lets me on and works just fine for ME. If there are too many users, it just bots soneone else and lets me on.

Ari Rahikkala · August 6, 2002, 16:33

Maybe our server is actually LatG? Taking into account your signature that would make sense...

Rasbelin · August 6, 2002, 16:49

Things have got worse for me too, as now even I encounter this traffic jam problem.

Well, let's just hope more bandwith or server capacity will come available.

GhengisFarb™ · August 6, 2002, 19:10

Wow, now that I know I'm not the only getting blocked out, I seem to feel better........