Computer issues, BCTS, and viruses

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We all have them. Lately I've been getting lag. I usually do a scan about once a month, more if I need it.

Having had a sex starved teen I have had the chance to get lots of experience fixing various problems. After a while I made him fix his various problems, and kept him off my machine. Anyone who has a kid knows how well that works, they usually do what they want to, and deal with the consequences later.

Mine learned quite early I could access the cache through the house network. It saved me a lot of issues, though I don't think he was impressed.

What I'm trying to do here is establish I do know something about the subject. Not as much as I would like, but I have a firm background in computer science.

Lately BCTS has been a bit glitchy. Nothing too serious, but I get the feeling it wasn't updating properly on my computer. I would occasionally get a blue screen (not to be confused with the blue screen of death) with a ghostly head looking down on a message that starts off "Site Off Line". The reason I suspected it was on my end is after a few screen refreshes it would go away.

This morning the site BCTS down hard. I did a boot scan on my computer, and did find a java virus, that was cleaned out. I use Avast free.

So it could be a particularly obnoxious piece of malware. It could also be some instability on BCTS. I don't have an opinion either way, yet.

I'm just curious if anyone else has had problems.

Comments

The offline message

erin's picture

We have a memory leak in mysql or something similar here at BC. So, once every two hours, at approximately 29 minutes after the hour, we put up the offline message and reset the memory stack in the database. Takes about twenty seconds. We're still working on how to fix this.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

We had something similar at my work place

For some reason migrating some of the data to memcache worked : we assume that the mysql server left too many junk in the memory { due to some internal bug or bad sql scripting on our part) and that reducing direct access to it ( and better indexing the database :D) solved the issue.

We did those things, too

erin's picture

The re-indexing the database created some OTHER problems we did not expect. Sheesh!

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

What method are you using to index common data?

If you are using stock mysql indexing then you're into one big problem, The indexing is just not good enough for the amount of memory it consumes.

If you could take a look at sphinx for indexing purposes it might solve the problem ( plus caching the newest content might help as I reckon 90% of the users access only the newest data).

We're using SOLR

erin's picture

SOLR does all of the searching now, equivalent to Sphinx and there is an interface to the software we use. But that's not the big problem because text searching is only one of the indexing problems. We'll look into Sphinx and maybe try it on one of our other sites to see if it is better. Thanks.

Also, we're using, in effect, three levels of caching. Non-logged in visitors see a new front page only once in 5 minutes, we keep serving the same content otherwise. Even logged in visitors have caching for the blocks and parts of pages that don't change much. On top of that, everything is compressed and cached again so if two people ask for the same page within the same 15 minute block, it doesn't have to be regenerated.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Yes, OddPOV

I'm getting the "site offline" screen on an almost daily basis, sometimes several times a day. I have put it down as part of the ongoing site upgrade, but I don't know that for a fact.

Edit: Erin posted at the same time as me, so now I know as a fact.


"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin

Good to know

Answered my questions. I've had technical issues with my BBS for 10 years or longer, so I do not throw stones. Doing something like this site (especially as well as it is done) is much harder than it looks. Many people don't get it though. :D

Yes, the site was down from about 5:am to 6:45 PDT

erin's picture

We're still not sure why. It came back up with a reboot and seems fine now and the logs are not being helpful.

Hugs,
Erin

= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.

Logs!

Angharad's picture

I'd have thought a gas fire was more effective.

Angharad 8)

Angharad