Web CLASSIFIED problem or a hack?

[knight0334]

It's above my pay grade too but my experience tells me that it is not connected with the number of pictures. I have experienced it with newly started threads with no pictures in them.

It isn't because of the small or new threads, it is because someone else loaded one of the huge threads with lots of pictures. That is why we had to kill much of the search engine bots from scanning certain portions of the forum a few years ago, especially the classified section.

Example: I, or multiple people, click near enough to the same time to load the original Gun Babes or What Did You Buy Yourself thread, everyone else at that moment starts getting the 502/504 errors because the server is trying to match up pictures to html commands on the page itself, then stream both out.

Then what also compounds the problem is that the file(picture) storage is very high and so you have files that are fragmented. The hard drive is trying to scan whatever number of gigabytes/terabytes of space for bits and pieces of individual pictures to splice them back together. Spinner type hard drives can only look for (1) thing at a time. If a 1Mb picture is broken up into 3 different chunks, spread out across 500Gb of space in amongst countless thousands of pictures and other data - you start getting humanly noticeable delays.

The 1000+ reply heavy picture threads are the biggest culprit of the problems. Or multiple people loading somewhat smaller pic-heavy threads. Each time I close one of those and start a new one, allowing the old thread to get buried and not loaded - the problems let up for awhile until someone digs up one of the old threads to view or a new thread gets big.

[knight0334]

I just looked up the HK forum and scrolled to the bottom.
Yep. Same Cannuks, different company name than I was thinking - both show the same business address though.
Same forum software.

I'm a member at a few of them that got bought up and converted. The conversion for each wasn't without hiccups.

That was a couple/few years ago. There was big worries they were buying them up to close them down, which thankfully didn't happen.

[Walleye Hunter]

It isn't because of the small or new threads, it is because someone else loaded one of the huge threads with lots of pictures. That is why we had to kill much of the search engine bots from scanning certain portions of the forum a few years ago, especially the classified section.

Example: I, or multiple people, click near enough to the same time to load the original Gun Babes or What Did You Buy Yourself thread, everyone else at that moment starts getting the 502/504 errors because the server is trying to match up pictures to html commands on the page itself, then stream both out.

Then what also compounds the problem is that the file(picture) storage is very high and so you have files that are fragmented. The hard drive is trying to scan whatever number of gigabytes/terabytes of space for bits and pieces of individual pictures to splice them back together. Spinner type hard drives can only look for (1) thing at a time. If a 1Mb picture is broken up into 3 different chunks, spread out across 500Gb of space in amongst countless thousands of pictures and other data - you start getting humanly noticeable delays.

The 1000+ reply heavy picture threads are the biggest culprit of the problems. Or multiple people loading somewhat smaller pic-heavy threads. Each time I close one of those and start a new one, allowing the old thread to get buried and not loaded - the problems let up for awhile until someone digs up one of the old threads to view or a new thread gets big.

That does make sense but doesn't answer why the problem ceases for me when I log out and back on a clear cookies. Have ye any insight on that?

[knight0334]

That does make sense but doesn't answer why the problem ceases for me when I log out and back on a clear cookies. Have ye any insight on that?

I think that has to do with some of the caching and what DNS record's your specific computer logs.

By clearing the cookies/cache, it helps clear inconsistencies between what you computer has cached/logged with what has changed on the server. Your PC just loads a fresh copy.

Then possibly the problem has self rectified by the time you clear, log out, log back in.

The clearing/log out/log in has never worked for me. ...I already have my PC set to minimal cookies and NO caching whatsoever.

I've self induced the 502/504 problem doing some testing when there was just me and a couple other souls visiting the site at 3:30AM. I used a couple test accounts signed in on a tablet and different browser at same time as my main account on Firefox. As soon as I tried to load one of the problem threads with both or either test account, my main account went 502/504 error or got a long delay without resulting in the error.(sometimes you don't get the error page, but the reloading of the thread after submitting reply delays often causing a double post).

No matter what, this is something for DanP to handle. Best I can do is close and bury some of the massive threads from time to time - which does help.

I'm sure it will take him to do some manual editing, deletions, and a more modern server rental(harddrive abilities in specific, CPU load isn't too bad except when the errors occur) to completely eliminate it. 17+ years of posts/threads, thousands of uploaded pictures, and 80K'ish members is a lot of data.