info Autoshite technical help. Ask questions about how the site works here.

[320touring]

@SiC

Having some trouble with finding content I have started..

When I go into the "content I have started" link I get stuff from last year as per picture

Also the search function doesn't return any current (sub 1 month old) posts from me - almost like there is no information returned?

[Asimo]

 Slow to load today, almost TDW levels of slowness.

[SiC]

So had a poke around to figure what TF is going on and why some things have gone weird.

Found a few things:

• Server is currently running PHP v8.2. Old server was on PHP v8.1
  This isn't the latest version of PHP (its actually quite old) but one that the OS supported natively.
  The Invision Forum server check tool said it was all good, so I rolled with it. However I found this earlier that said they don't support it, even though their checker says its okay
  https://invisioncommunity.com/forums/topic/472888-php-82-thread/
• The search service hammers the server when indexing. Once indexed it doesn't use that much processor time. 
  So the seperate server I used to run didn't get a work out once everything was indexed and wasting (monetry) resources.
  Because the indexing takes so much processor time, it times out. I think this is what has screwed up the index where it stops about a year ago and then has started again from the last few days.
• I ran an extra search service to try getting around the no shards available. While both should be in sync, it this seems to do heavy work between the two daily (about 2 hours ago I presume was the last time). It could be the forum software kicking this off too, as that has some scheduled jobs that it runs daily (which you can't configure the exact time for it to run annoyingly).
• There appears to be a patch fix for the weird page change behavour. At least I assume its that by this message "Fixes issues with changing pages in some forum views"
  This isn't widely published, just comes up with information on the admin console. Usually you get a big message (as an admin) saying an update is available on all pages. 

 

This is what the admin console support section says:

 

You'd think if PHP8.2 wasn't properly supported, it would tell you...

Anyway here is what I'm planning to do:

• Update to the latest forum version. This should fix the weird page issue.
• Roll back to PHP8.1. 
  This is actually a bit of a pain as for ease of maintenance I like the OS to deal with keeping it all updated but it means using a package source from elsewhere. Debian 12 only has PHP8.2
• Modify the search server to be a single instance. It was generally pretty stable like this on the old setup. I'll give it a huge amount more RAM to gobble into which hopefully might stop the shard unavailable issue.
  If this doesn't work, I'll have to run it on another instance. This will just mean extra monthly cost for the forum unfortunately. The forum software heavily relies on the search working beyond just the search box in the corner.

To do all that properly, I'm going to need another maintenance session again soon, with the forum down an hour or so.

[LightBulbFun]

dont know if it was just a my-end DNS wobble or such, but just now autoshite.com was failing to resolve for me, just thought I would mention it just incase!

[tooSavvy]

Down detector confirmation on my phone...

🚙💨

[RayMK]

I've had several no shows between about 11am and 20 minutes ago with 'Bad Gateway' being the white screen message.  Even when the site was up, clicking to view some threads would hang for at least 10 seconds before showing the most recent page.  I have zero expertise in whatever @SiC is having to do, but thanks all the same.    More software equivalent of Redex may help.

[grogee]

^wot he said

Site seems a bit iffy. Quite a few bad gateway errors today and it's slow, too. 

Bit more choke maybe? 

[High Jetter]

Not seen any errors, but pages are painfully slow to load.

[SiC]

Yeah sorry it's been monumentally shite at the moment and not shite in a good way. I need to have a proper look later but I've been out for most of today. I've given it a poke when I've noticed it's down (or been told), so trying to keep the downtime to a minimum. 

Hopefully I'll have time later today to see wtf is going on. 

[SiC]

I turned off the search server service earlier. It isn't happy bedfellows with the rest of the system. Disappointing as I was hoping to consolidate everything together in one image. 

There should be enough resources for both but it seems that at times it just likes to hammer the CPU doing something (probably maintenance). If that coincides with a heavy period on the site, everything goes to a crawl. Just slightly too much for it to cope.

Basically like this:

 

 

I'll leave it off for the rest of this month and just let the old search system be in use. That restricts to the last 2 years worth of posts but at least the site is functional. 

Next month I'll either spin the search service back up in another server or try increasing the CPU + RAM on this to see if it plays ball. I don't want to do it this month as the bill is quite high from running two complete setups. 

I still have the other bits to sort that I mentioned in a post above. Right now I'm tired, so not going to start that. But will in the next few days. 

[MorrisItalSLX]

Just go a 500 error, it took about 2 minutes to come good again.

[SiC]

7 hours ago, MorrisItalSLX said:

Just go a 500 error, it took about 2 minutes to come good again.

My fat fingers this morning when logging in to check everything is okay and accidentally ran the command to restart the database server rather than htop (Linux equivalent of task manager). Sorry! (Probably only 60 seconds though)

[wuvvum]

On 24/03/2024 at 08:26, MorrisItalSLX said:

Just go a 500 error, it took about 2 minutes to come good again.

I've been getting a similar error this morning, only with "too many connections" instead of "connection refused".

[scooobydont]

Silly question but I cannot figure it out. How do I multi quote a reply that has already had several replies? I have tried pressing quote and have tried the + sign for multiquote but it only ever includes the last response (hope this makes sense?)

[eddyramrod]

Multiquote needs to be done manually.  So let's say you press the + on the latest reply, you then need to go back through the previous contributions and press + on each one individually.  This does mean that if you want to, you can insert comments of your own between the existing replies.

[egg]

Sorry not an important query, but how many registered users do we have and how many are actually active? (i.e. logged in weekly)

[scooobydont]

1 hour ago, eddyramrod said:

Multiquote needs to be done manually.  So let's say you press the + on the latest reply, you then need to go back through the previous contributions and press + on each one individually.  This does mean that if you want to, you can insert comments of your own between the existing replies.

Thanks, it's been doing my head in.

[SiC]

1 hour ago, egg said:

Sorry not an important query, but how many registered users do we have and how many are actually active? (i.e. logged in weekly)

User overview for all time

 

Member activity overview for the last 6 months per week.

 

I usually see about 480 to 550 users viewing the site in the evening (including guests not signed in). So while not a massive forum, there is still a quite a lot of activity on here. 

[Remspoor]

Odd country stats there. Some of the countries listed are part of the Eurocreep Union. And the EU is not a country (pedantic mood now off)

[High Jetter]

I see that Autoshite is the 2nd most populace country of users!

[egg]

Thanks, shows it's a nice size of community - where you can realistically get to know* people.

[Dick Cheeseburger]

16 minutes ago, SiC said:

User overview for all time

 

Member activity overview for the last 6 months per week.

 

I usually see about 480 to 550 users viewing the site in the evening (including guests not signed in). So while not a massive forum, there is still a quite a lot of activity on here. 

Those are pretty impressive user numbers considering forums are by and large, dead. RR seems much quieter than it used to be, whereas this place seems to be as popular as ever. 

[egg]

2 hours ago, Dick Longbridge said:

Those are pretty impressive user numbers considering forums are by and large, dead. RR seems much quieter than it used to be, whereas this place seems to be as popular as ever. 

Kind of makes sense when you think the average AS'er (yes I'm including myself) fundamentally can't let go of the past 😆

[SiC]

3 hours ago, Remspoor said:

Odd country stats there. Some of the countries listed are part of the Eurocreep Union. And the EU is not a country (pedantic mood now off)

I didn't create the fields and was likely setup years ago 🤷‍♂️

I mean Autoshite isn't exactly a country either?

[Remspoor]

8 hours ago, SiC said:

Autoshite isn't exactly a country either?

No it is a world of it's own.😆

[SiC]

Sorry about that brief down period. Ran out of disk space as I disabled deleting the copies after uploading when I set it up. Oops.

[High Jetter]

1 hour ago, SiC said:

Sorry about that brief down period. Ran out of disk space as I disabled deleting the copies after uploading when I set it up. Oops.

Thanks for sorting it so quickly.

[SiC]

Not sure how long it was for. (Edit: looks to have started around 13:55, I think I sorted it at 14:30)

Only sorted quickly as I'm on here too much and noticed the error when idly browsing 😅 

 

[GR8 PL8 M8]

On 25/03/2024 at 16:32, eddyramrod said:

Multiquote needs to be done manually.  So let's say you press the + on the latest reply, you then need to go back through the previous contributions and press + on each one individually.  This does mean that if you want to, you can insert comments of your own between the existing replies.

Do you know how to make them nest? I've seen other people do it, and I have a vague memory of successfully doing it myself in the past, but I've tried a few times recently and can't figure it out!

[eddyramrod]

Nest?  Er, what?  Not a clue, sorry!