Database tuning - possible problems

[Steve St.Laurent]

After watching how mysql is running with the new software I need to do some tuning to optimize it's performance. Last night when we hit 670 users online simultaneously the server loads went fully loaded and stayed there for about 40 minutes. I'll be doing some tuning to the database which will cause me to have to reboot it occassionaly (which will cause you to get errors while it reboots). It also may hurt performance at times while I tweak things here and there. Bear with me and I'll have this thing tuned up ASAP. Sorry for any inconvenience.



-Steve St. Laurent

Webmaster

 

[knewman]

then you can come and work on my server

 

[Mingoglia]

Just noticed you switched to FreeBSD from Linux... good for you. FreeBSD is an outstanding platform. Just look at the top uptime on the Internet... every now and then one of the top 10 hosts is not BSD based... but for the most part they're all BSD. Unfortunately we had a power outage that outlasted my UPS run time so 2 of my BSD servers went down that have been up since I moved into this building over 2 years ago. It was cool every time I went into Top and saw 700+ days of uptime.



What version of MySQL you running? I noticed that 4. x runs EXPONENTIALLY better than 3. x with FreeBSD... FreeBSD and 3. x runs like a dog unless you use Linux threads... . actually even with 4. x, running Linux threads is better than FreeBSD's native threads... . but 4. x with FreeBSD's threads is still a major improvement.



Mike

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

We've been running on FreeBSD for several years now and I switched to Mysql 4. x early this year.

 

[Mingoglia]

You're right... of course, since it's your stuff... Didn't look at the dates... . looks like it's been running since the middle of '02...



FreeBSD Apache/1. 3. 22 (Unix) PHP/4. 2. 1 mod_ssl/2. 8. 5 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6a 3-Feb-2004 69. 61. 23. 10 Global Compass, Inc.

FreeBSD Apache/1. 3. 22 (Unix) PHP/4. 1. 1 mod_ssl/2. 8. 5 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6a 7-Apr-2003 139. 81. 139. 106 GLI

FreeBSD Apache/1. 3. 22 (Unix) PHP/4. 1. 1 mod_ssl/2. 8. 5 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6a 6-Jul-2002 216. 235. 147. 117 Marietta Fibernet

Linux Apache/1. 3. 20 (Unix) mod_throttle/3. 1. 2 mod_gzip/1. 3. 19. 1a PHP/4. 0. 6 mod_ssl/2. 8. 4 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6a 8-Apr-2002 128. 242. 249. 86 Verio

Linux Apache/1. 3. 20 (Unix) mod_gzip/1. 3. 19. 1a PHP/4. 0. 6 mod_ssl/2. 8. 4 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6a 12-Oct-2001 128. 242. 249. 86 Verio

Linux Apache/1. 3. 14 (Unix) mod_throttle/3. 1. 2 mod_gzip/1. 3. 19. 1a PHP/4. 0. 4pl1 mod_ssl/2. 7. 1 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6 6-Jun-2001 128. 242. 213. 121 Verio

Linux Apache/1. 3. 14 (Unix) mod_gzip/1. 3. 19. 1a PHP/4. 0. 4pl1 mod_ssl/2. 7. 1 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6 8-May-2001 128. 242. 213. 121 Verio

Linux Apache/1. 3. 14 (Unix) PHP/4. 0. 4pl1 mod_ssl/2. 7. 1 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6 26-Feb-2001 128. 242. 213. 121 Verio

Linux Apache/1. 3. 14 (Unix) PHP/4. 0. 3pl1 mod_ssl/2. 7. 1 OpenSSL/0. 9. 6 18-Dec-2000 128. 242. 213. 121 Verio

 

[Gypsyman]

Steve,

Is what you're working on going to speed up the loading of the pages? I can't believe how much slower the new site loads. My experience may be rare as I live on the road and a 32k dial up is about the best I can ever find.



-Richard

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

It will speed things up at peak times but what you are probably seeing is just load time of the pages. The new pages are about 50% larger than the old ones - so if it took 10 seconds for a page to load before it'll take about 15 now. People on slow connections like you are going to notice it the most. You might try downloading and using firefox for a browser. Several people have used that and were shocked by how much faster than IE it was.

 

[Kirwin]

Spell check for posts

I'm not sure if this is the place to post this but can we get the spell check feature back for us poor spellers on the site? Ken Irwin

 

[Steve St.Laurent]

Yes, the spell checker will be reinstalled down the road. I let everyone know in my announcement on the changes about the spell check. It's a major feature that adds overhead and a lot of code so I'm waiting to make sure everything is running good before I add it. Support from vB is made far more complicated when there are code modifications involved. Also, I need to recover - a little over a month of 80 hour weeks took a lot out of me.

 

[dseabaugh]

Is firefox faster than netscape? I refuse to get caught up in IE even though earthlink says they don't support it, it works fine for us.