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Slow again

karactr ๐Ÿšซ
Updated:

Is it just me, or has the response gotten slow again? It seems to take up to 20 secs for a response to any link on the site.

ETA: And just after posting this, that went away. Am I missing something?

Replies:   Switch Blayde  Gauthier
ian181 ๐Ÿšซ

My response time delay was only 2 seconds and Figured it was just Lazese doing some fine tuning.

Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@karactr

I can only speak to the Forum. Sometimes it's slow and other times it's not.

Gauthier ๐Ÿšซ

@karactr

But no more TLS issues, or static file delivery issues.
It's just temporary increases in PhP execution time. Since it's still Apache, it also mean cpu is not maxed out on all web server hosts.
So it's a either a lag within the infrastructure (memcached or mySQL) or a configuration issue with the load balancer.

Replies:   karactr
karactr ๐Ÿšซ

@Gauthier

I...have no idea what language you are typing.

I just know response is slow...yes, I cleared cookies and cache...but, no total time outs like last week.

Michael Loucks ๐Ÿšซ

Sometimes it's super fast (basically instantaneous) but then, suddenly, every page takes 3-5 seconds to start loading. Then it's really fast again. Can't find anything consistent about the slow times.

Replies:   REP
REP ๐Ÿšซ

@Michael Loucks

I've seen the same thing off and on for the past several days, and not always when linking to SOL's site. It appears to me to be an outside influence in addition to the problems Lazeez is fixing.

Keet ๐Ÿšซ

Same here, sometimes very fast, other times very slow, almost to the point of a time-out.

Replies:   Switch Blayde
Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@Keet

Same here, sometimes very fast, other times very slow,

Me too. For the Forum. I've only been on the Forum.

REP ๐Ÿšซ
Updated:

I had a couple of odd occurrences, and thought I'd mention them.

1) When I clicked Post for the above post, I didn't get a Refresh button. SB's post appeared, but not mine. I retyped my post, clicked Post and got a Refresh button and refreshed the screen. I got both of my posts. ????

2) Then I opened and started to read a story. I opened the story from my Library. It opened displaying the newly posted chapter instead of the last read chapter as I have it configured to do. I've had this happen before. Then while I was reading the story, with my cursor positioned in the middle of the screen, the display switched to the previous screen (my Library). ????

awnlee jawking ๐Ÿšซ

@REP

I've noticed posts taking extended times to appear on the forum. One of mine was referenced immediately in the threads headings but took 14 minutes until the actual post was available to read. Someone else's took 12 minutes. This was after the server rebuild.

AJ

Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@REP

1) When I clicked Post for the above post, I didn't get a Refresh button. SB's post appeared, but not mine. I retyped my post, clicked Post and got a Refresh button and refreshed the screen. I got both of my posts. ????

That happened to me the other day.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

We're still tweaking the new system's configurations. I made a couple of changes today that seem to be helping. Please let me know how it is behaving on your system currently.

Replies:   REP  Switch Blayde
REP ๐Ÿšซ

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

It has been a little slow for me today. But that may not be SOL. Its slow when I go to other sites also .

Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Please let me know how it is behaving on your system currently.

I just got back online. The Forum is slow. When I clicked on "reply" just now it took a while for this box to come up. The other stuff I'm doing is also slow.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@Switch Blayde

Sigh!

It's the SSL handshake thing again!

doctor_wing_nut ๐Ÿšซ

Noticeably slower for me today, and sporadically for the last few. Thought maybe it was another dos at first.

Don't you just love Da Interwebs?

REP ๐Ÿšซ

Clicked post to post the above. Got a Refresh button and clicked it. Indications showed post was being submitted to server. DWN's post appeared but not mine. Refresh button still present. Clicked it again and my post appeared.

Grant ๐Ÿšซ

Very slow at the moment. Was slow on and off yesterday as well.

I never experienced the previous SSL handshake slowdown issues.

Grant ๐Ÿšซ

And now OK, very quick and responsive.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@Grant

Yeah, that's because I turned off https on most of SOL.

Replies:   doctor_wing_nut
doctor_wing_nut ๐Ÿšซ

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Yeah, that's because I turned off https on most of SOL.

Isn't that an undesirable trade-off? Personally, I could live with slow page loads if I had to.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@doctor_wing_nut

Isn't that an undesirable trade-off? Personally, I could live with slow page loads if I had to.

You may put up with it for the 'secure' badge, but a lot of others don't. Whenever it slows down, traffic starts dropping off.

The hourly traffic dropped more than 25% from noon till I turned https off. Then it started climbing up again after the switch.

The pages that need it like the log in page and subscription and mail are still encrypted. Listings and stories aren't.

You can simply switch to https on your own. Just add the 's'. It doesn't force you to non-secure, well except for chapters, it will go to http from the index page to a chapter.

Replies:   Gauthier
Gauthier ๐Ÿšซ
Updated:

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Well, I'm not convinced by the TLS issue.

Before the total slow down on both static and dynamic page, there was a slow down by PhP with no increase of TLS handshake timing.

My understanding is:

Step 1: Increased processing time of php page due to latencies (DB/cache/API/?) with response time 4-10 sec

Step 2: Apache process exhaustion -> static file and TLS handshake are now slow too.

The only odd thing is why removing TLS/SSL improve the situation!


The only idea I have on the subject would be that your page build process would make http request to your server. That's common if you implemented a REST API, but it could be as simple as a readfile on an http url forced to https.

If some framework internal request are forced to https that would result in huge connection latencies which would explain why removing https resolve your problem.

That is also easy to diagnose, just compare the page php execution time of a server on http and a server which convert http to https. If the time are not identical you have a framework issue.

Edit:

I've timed the execution time on http vs https, on storiesonline.net/d/All on 6 calls there is no significant difference. when removing blocking and TLS handshake delay. So my potential explanation may be wrong, but there was no forcing http to https on that test.

Anyway, wathever the cause of your latencies are, I would recommend:

- nginx: because it won't exhaust the processes.

- http2 because it reduce the number of handshake.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@Gauthier

http2 might help. We'll see.

For now, more tweaks and back to full https. How is it working? for now on my end everything seems very quick.

Replies:   Switch Blayde
Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

For now, more tweaks and back to full https. How is it working?

I'm on the Forum and it's fast.

Grant ๐Ÿšซ

At present things are still very responsive, at least for me.

Michael Loucks ๐Ÿšซ

Performance seems pretty good again.

Remus2 ๐Ÿšซ

No problems here.

karactr ๐Ÿšซ

As the OP I must say that things are the fast normal at the moment.

Keet ๐Ÿšซ

Some pages still slow (like getting the edit window on the forum), other pages back to normal.
One thing that stood out: when getting an authors story list the story page appeared just a little slow but it took several more seconds before the green "not read" bullets and green "downloaded" arrows appeared.

doctor_wing_nut ๐Ÿšซ

Everything's working very quickly for me. Thanks Lazeez.

Gauthier ๐Ÿšซ

SOL is Much Faster, finestories however, remain slow.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@Gauthier

Same servers, same configuration and same software.

๐Ÿ˜ถ

Replies:   Gauthier
Gauthier ๐Ÿšซ

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Well, finestories is around 4200ms, sol is around 250ms.
If it's all the same, maybe on index issues. Possibly related to the flag/read or a remnant of your isp slowpoke protections.

Grant ๐Ÿšซ
Updated:

Here, very responsive.

Finestories main page, very slow. Recent top stories, very slow. Authors & other links slow, then while checking other links, very responsive for a few clicks, then back to slow.
While clicking on a letter under Authors link, slow. When clicking on letters after that, some slow, some fast, then all fast.
Go back to main page, very slow. Back to Authors page, slow, click on letter, slow. Click on other letter links, some slow, some fast, then all fast again.
Reviews link, very slow. Blogs link, very slow- Clicking on blog or post link, very slow.

Here, still very responsive.

ScifiStories home page, slow.
Authors link & letter links, very responsive. Reviews link, very slow. Blogs link, very slow- Clicking on blog or post link, very slow.

After doing that, Finestories was very responsive when I went back there, for a few clicks, then back to previous very slow/slow behaviour with some parts becoming fast, but reverting to slow after going back to slow main page.

Going back to ScifiStorties, Home page now very slow, Authors link now slow, letter links now slow & fast like Finestories letter links.

Here, still very responsive.

garymrssn ๐Ÿšซ

I don't remember it being mentioned, so I'm going to ask. Could it possibly be a hardware problem?
I'm thinking a disk drive getting flaky causing intermittent excessive read times.

Replies:   Michael Loucks
Michael Loucks ๐Ÿšซ

@garymrssn

Pretty sure the VMs were completely rebuilt.

sharkjcw ๐Ÿšซ

Have browser setup to dump cookies when I log off, site is running fine now.
I am logging off at least once a day, or whenever away from computer for more than an hour.

Ernest Bywater ๐Ÿšซ

don't know why, but today Fine Stories has taken almost twice as long to respond as SoL and SciFi has.

doctor_wing_nut ๐Ÿšซ

I also see Finestories load slower than SOL, using the link form the home page, and SciFi-Stories does not auto-logon using the same link. That seems odd.

Replies:   Gauthier
Gauthier ๐Ÿšซ

@doctor_wing_nut

For me the home page SOL Link to FineStories & Scifi both trigger the autologon correctly.

Note that while those three website share a login database, and the Home Links migrate the login status, there is no SSO (Single Sign On) like OAuth, so the login status are independent and log in/out of one site doesn't log you in/out of the others.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

More servers tweaks. Please let me know how it's working for you. After the previous tweak I saw fast performance but got reports of slow performance, especially on other domains.

Let me know if it's slow for you or not.

Replies:   awnlee jawking
awnlee jawking ๐Ÿšซ

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

I entered a reply to a forum post and clicked on 'post'. The message 'connecting to server' came up, so I switched windows back to a story I was reading. Twenty minutes later I checked back and it was still 'connecting to server'. I canceled then tried again, same result. I realised I had four SOL windows open so I closed a couple in case the two session limit was still in place. Same result. Then after another twenty minutes or so I tried yet again and my post was there like shit off a shovel.

AJ

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@awnlee jawking

The message 'connecting to server' came up

One of the tweaks disabled the backend processing of forum posts. It took few minutes to figure it out.

shit off a shovel

Never heard that expression before. Shit is sticky, so slow?

Damn it!

Replies:   awnlee jawking
awnlee jawking ๐Ÿšซ

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Never heard that expression before. Shit is sticky, so slow?

I apologise for not responding earlier (have to sleep sometime), but @richardshagrin is correct - 'shit off a shovel' means very fast.

AJ

richardshagrin ๐Ÿšซ

shit off a shovel

"Very Fast.

In the days when trains had a driver and a fireman to load coal and it was necessary to answer a call of nature you would shit on the coal shovel and then throw it in the fire as quick as possible because of smell and hygiene. As the shovel had coal dust on it, the shit did not stick. Interestingly the same shovel could be cleaned with steam and could be used to cook bacon and eggs."

You can find a lot of things on-line.

karactr ๐Ÿšซ

I don't use the other domains often. SOL is quick on all links ATM.

doctor_wing_nut ๐Ÿšซ

All sites working well here, thanks!

Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

The Forum is working fast for me.

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