Brief Forum Downtime

[eigen]

Hi all-

Sorry for the downtime this morning. There were some processes that got stuck on the forum server, and were causing it to run out of memory. They're cleared and we're back up!

I'll keep an eye on things to make sure they don't creep back.

Cheers,

Eigen

[mamselle]

Hi all-

Sorry for the downtime this morning. There were some processes that got stuck on the forum server, and were causing it to run out of memory. They're cleared and we're back up!

I'll keep an eye on things to make sure they don't creep back.

Cheers,

Eigen

Thanks for all you do!

M.

[namazu]

Thanks, Eigen!

[ab_grp]

Adding my thanks for all your work on this site.  So, thanks!

[Parasaurolophus]

Sorry for the downtime this morning.

I might maybe be willing to forgive you at some point in the future...

[Hibush]

Thanks for finding and fixing that issue!

[EdnaMode]

Thanks for all you do! I had a bit of a moment (not panic, nope, of course not) when I saw that it was down yesterday :)

[downer]

Thanks Eigen

The thought occurred to me that it might be helpful to have somewhere else to post enquiries about the status of The Fora when it is down. Somewhere like a Facebook group, or even Twitter. But it might be more trouble than it is worth.

[Thursday's_Child]

While composing my previous post it froze several times and I got a message that thefora.org wasn't responding.  Could this be related?  It doesn't usually happen.

[mamselle]

Thanks Eigen

The thought occurred to me that it might be helpful to have somewhere else to post enquiries about the status of The Fora when it is down. Somewhere like a Facebook group, or even Twitter. But it might be more trouble than it is worth.

Yes, because when I tried to use the email address suggested as an alert, it was apparently a part of the problem, so could not be a part of the solution....or at least, I got a "non-functioning email" reply a few moments later...

M.

[eigen]

So an update on downtime (some of you might have noticed we had another outage a few nights ago):

It looks like we've had a *sharp* uptick in "guests", many of who are bots. This is putting an inordinate load on the servers in terms of number of parallel processes running.

I've put some more severe limits on what guests can view to see if that helps. If you're used to browsing as a guest, you may need to start logging in.

If you notice detrimental downsides, let me know!

[traductio]

So an update on downtime (some of you might have noticed we had another outage a few nights ago):

It looks like we've had a *sharp* uptick in "guests", many of who are bots. This is putting an inordinate load on the servers in terms of number of parallel processes running.

I've put some more severe limits on what guests can view to see if that helps. If you're used to browsing as a guest, you may need to start logging in.

If you notice detrimental downsides, let me know!

Are you at all concerned about the effect of this change on lurkers? I know it took me five minutes to find this explanation, and I've been on the Fora since the CHE days. But I was also a lurker for quite a long time, and like many, I made good use of the advice I could find easily and for free. Creating an account would have been enough of an obstacle that I wouldn't have bothered.

[eigen]

So an update on downtime (some of you might have noticed we had another outage a few nights ago):

It looks like we've had a *sharp* uptick in "guests", many of who are bots. This is putting an inordinate load on the servers in terms of number of parallel processes running.

I've put some more severe limits on what guests can view to see if that helps. If you're used to browsing as a guest, you may need to start logging in.

If you notice detrimental downsides, let me know!

Are you at all concerned about the effect of this change on lurkers? I know it took me five minutes to find this explanation, and I've been on the Fora since the CHE days. But I was also a lurker for quite a long time, and like many, I made good use of the advice I could find easily and for free. Creating an account would have been enough of an obstacle that I wouldn't have bothered.

Having the forum crash constantly due to the guest traffic will also have a negative effect on lurkers.

There's no way to differentiate lurkers who are legitimate users from the ~50 or so constant "guests" who are bots, and every page they are able to access adds significantly to the load on the servers.

[Cheerful]

Too bad.  Some lurk for years to gain info and don't want to register.  I accessed The Fora as Guest repeatedly today and thought it was down.  I've lurked on other boards for years and no such problems there.  Guess it depends on server issues.

Good to know many recent "guests" are bots.  I naively thought those stats indicated increasing interest. : (

Thanks for all you do to keep The Fora going. : )

[Liquidambar]

If displaying this number of boards has the desired outcome on server load, maybe we can give some thought to which board would draw in the most new members?  The job board seemed to be a big draw to the old fora, so I'd be inclined to vote for that one.