Homestar Runner Wiki Forum

Why is the Wiki all screwed up? I've been trying to access the Peasant's Quest page all day, and it won't even let me on. It'll let me on the forum, but not on the regular Wiki.

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Yup. Things have been pretty horked up over the last few weeks.

I am sure that you have noticed how slow things have been getting. The problem is the same problem that every other homestar runner site has experienced at one time or another.

I am not exactly sure what is going on with the servers (as I don't manage them, and don't communicate with the guy who does directly), hopefully Joey will be able to fill me in on the stuff I miss or get wrong.

Both the Forums and Wiki use php and mysql extensively. Every page in each of them are stored in a database. Everytime you access a page, it needs to go to the db, get the info, then create the page with that info.

In our case, all of this is happening on one machine. This is faster as long as the machine can handle the load. As we have been growing, so has the load.

On a normal machine (or one that is properly loaded) numbers like .20-.25 are considered decent for a "average machine load". Yesterday afternoon I was getting numbers around 25-30 (What is that 100 times worse?) It all has to do with the way that everything is set up and the way our programs are accessing it.

You may have noticed around 6-7ish pacific time that things went completely down, then came back up about 15 minutes later. I think our host reboot the server (as all of the load averages are sitting around .05-.1 right now. But I also think he did something to the number of connections we are allowed to the mysql db from the wiki. (Usually the max connections is set to 150, and allowed to grow if needed. The way things look right now, the max connections is set to 0)

As I said before, this is all speculation. I don't personally know the guy who runs the servers we use, but Joey does. He is a busy guy, but is quite aware of all that is going on. Most importantly, we are working on it.

So keep your pants on.... for real

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There's a little more to it that that. For one thing, Tavi seems to have been designed without any semblance of scalability in mind.

You know how every time a page gets cleared, it should be automatically deleted after so many days? Well, none of us knew this until today, but apparently EVERY time you load a page, whether you are simply viewing, editing, or saving it, Tavi calls a script that checks EVERY page on the site to see if it has been cleared. If it's been cleared, it checks to see how many days it's been since it was cleared, and deletes it if appropriate.

Since this happens every time someone loads a page, it buries the server even under small traffic loads. We've added a patch to the script that decreases the frequency with which the maintenance script is run, but I still think things can be optimized further.

As for the headers, I'm not really sure what's wrong there. I'll be looking into that today.

it's been taking forever for me to load the wiki, but this forum is fine for me. and I don't think it's my internet, because Comcast never put me down.but this MODEM, however, is a different story...

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Pangolin (Pan-gol-lin) - Adorable photomanipulated artichoke.

Your internet most likely isn't a problem (it certainly could be). I know for sure that the computer I am using isn't on a slow connection, yet the wiki loads incredibly slow.

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Are there any other wiki engines that use less bandwith?

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Bandwidth's not the problem, it's CPU load (right?). We're working on finding a solution.

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Hey, it's cool.

We have complete faith in our Wiki Admins!
Keep up the good work!

keep it up!
it's starting to work, the main page is faster for me now.

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Pangolin (Pan-gol-lin) - Adorable photomanipulated artichoke.

I can't even get to the main page anymore.

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Keep up the awexome work. The wiki's been running well all day today, great jorb!

I think it's running better today because less people are looking for Peasant's Quest walkthroughs. Or it could simply be because it's no longer Monday. Monday's are always heavy.

Great Jorb so far guys! Keep that gravy train goin'!

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Whoa! We're moving to MediaWiki?!? furrykef, your dream has come true!
Seriously though, can I help with the move?

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Hopefully it will be better than WikiTikkiTavi...

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It's gotta be. Wikipedia is, like, 1000x times bigger than this itty-bitty wiki and has a much huger traffic load, but still holds up. That software has got to be designed for scalability.

- Kef

Well, excepting the tiny fact that Wikipedia is hosted on fourteen computers whereas ours shares one server with several other sites.

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It seems that it's gotten a lot faster today!

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Yes, but there's still a definite need to keep the software optimized, as opposed to having everything slow down when there are five users doing something.

Agreed. But still, Jones has a very important point. Not only are we sharing the computers with other users, they are also being used for multiple processes.

The email server, the mysql database and the webserver are all being run from one machine. (or at least that is what I am able to perceive... and I am pretty certain)

If money wasn't an issue, the proper method for doing this would be to give each of them their own dedicated machine. But since money is an issue (with the folks we are hosting with) it may be some time before that happens. Everyone cross your fingers.

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My first attempt at ACSII art...



Oops...

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It took me a second to realize what you were doing.

You get an 'a' for effort.

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