Linda Posted April 28, 2015 Share Posted April 28, 2015 We are having more serious issues with the server, I am afraid. The server could handle the load last year and it is not bigger this year (so far), but something is going wrong and we have been unable to diagnose it. The site chokes very quickly as soon as load increases, as it does around an episode. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HexMachina Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 I'm having issues with my avatar. I tried to change it last night but ticking the "use gravatar" box doesn't seem to work (if I refresh the page the box is unticked again) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparks Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 We are having more serious issues with the server, I am afraid. The server could handle the load last year and it is not bigger this year (so far), but something is going wrong and we have been unable to diagnose it. The site chokes very quickly as soon as load increases, as it does around an episode. To elaborate slightly: the upgrade to Mediawiki has thrown a bit of a spanner in the works for all the load-balancing magic; that upgrade required some changes to the version of PHP we were using, which required changes to the PHP bytecode cache, which introduced an issue with Invision's use of that PHP bytecode cache... follow the chain of dominos. The short form is that what happens right now is that when the load gets heavy, Invision seems to corrupt the PHP bytecode cache, which causes Mediawiki to start hitting things harder, which causes load to increase, which causes Invision to catch fire and run screaming off a cliff. If the caching is turned off, the corruption doesn't happen, but then the load sets the server on fire anyway. :P I'm working on finding some more magic glue to stick the hamsters to their wheels. I put something new in place this morning (Pacific time) and we'll see how it goes, and depending on that, I may tear down a bunch of things and rebuild tonight. Alternatively, as a last resort, since they no longer are required to be on the same server by their configuration, I may yank the Wiki and Invision installations onto separate physical servers, so that they aren't sharing a PHP bytecode cache and see if we can't solve the issue that way. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linda Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 And possibly, there might also be an issue of there sort of being three competing applications, in the sense that MediaWiki's mobile skin may be generating a lot of extra cache rewriting as it competes with the regular skin. In hindsight, it was a huge mistake to update the wiki, but we were getting rather desperate about not having a mobile solution for it and there was no indication that it would go this badly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparks Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 And possibly, there might also be an issue of there sort of being three competing applications, in the sense that MediaWiki's mobile skin may be generating a lot of extra cache rewriting as it competes with the regular skin. In hindsight, it was a huge mistake to update the wiki, but we were getting rather desperate about not having a mobile solution for it and there was no indication that it would go this badly. Yeah. I didn't have any idea the Mediawiki upgrade would basically dynamite everything, or else I would've raised and waved red flags like mad, as if there was a bridge out ahead. But it seemed a pretty straightforward upgrade, and the test version of it didn't seem to blow everything up, soooo. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparks Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 I did also just reboot the servers, since we'd had like a bajillion years of uptime since the machine was last restarted; I decided that "have you tried turning it off and on again" couldn't hurt. ;) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rhaenys_Targaryen Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 I don't know if it is a connected issue, Sparks and/or Linda, but I just tried to edit something on the wiki, and constantly received the message that there was a loss of data, due to which my change could not be processed.. The page suggested to log out and back in.. So I logged out, and now find myself unable to log back in.. The wiki states that I don't have cookies enables, but I checked, and my cookies are enabled..? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avlonnic Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 (edited) Is anyone else having issues with posting? I am unable to format at all. Thanks... Edited April 29, 2015 by Avlonnic Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted April 29, 2015 Share Posted April 29, 2015 (edited) Test Test Test Test Formatting doesn't seem to be an issue for me. Edited April 29, 2015 by Ran Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inigima Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 (edited) I'm still getting ads both at the top and at the bottom. The top is stationary, but the bottom one scrolls with the page. Is this the intended behavior? It's super annoying, especially because it disappears when scrolling and then gets redrawn when you stop.Edit: Now I have two SEPARATE banners at the top. Edited April 30, 2015 by Inigima Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Suburbs Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Are you running the whole site on your own infrastructure? You should move it to the cloud: it costs less and you don't have to worry about patching or upgrades. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Avlonnic Posted April 30, 2015 Share Posted April 30, 2015 Test Test Test Test Formatting doesn't seem to be an issue for me. When I try to post, all of the control functions are grayed out - unavailable. If I quote someone, as I did you above, it shows up as code. Then anything I write just strings along in a long line. Is there something I can turn on or off to revert to the previous posting abilities? Is it something that can be turned off on your end? Thanks again. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted May 1, 2015 Share Posted May 1, 2015 What device and browser are you using? Does changing browser fix anything? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Killer Snark Posted May 2, 2015 Share Posted May 2, 2015 The Search function becomes unavailable on the site now pretty much at one point or another every day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ran Posted May 2, 2015 Share Posted May 2, 2015 That's because of going into performance mode, which disables profiles, search, and other features to make it less taxing. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mbruno Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 I just got an Internal Server Error while trying to use the wiki. Something to do with the recent server problems? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Linda Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 Yes, there are still issues. We moved the forum to the old server as it and the wiki can't coexist, but there are other issues with the wiki as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparks Posted May 4, 2015 Share Posted May 4, 2015 To elaborate slightly, there's an issue with this particular version of Mediawiki that arose after the upgrade. This issue is also the thing which led the forum and wiki to not co-exist well, which is why the forum was shifted back over to another machine; at least this way if the wiki does Strange Things, it doesn't take the forum down by virtue of being on the same webserver. There is a watchdog running which, if the wiki goes wonky, should function to shut it down and repair things. It means you'll get a Varnish error for about a minute or two when that happens, but then the wiki should come back properly after that. Hopefully we'll have a fix for the wonky wiki weirdness (yes, I'm just going for the alliteration at this point) soon and that will go away. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lordsteve666 Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 Hi guys i'm constantly getting all the ads down the left margin failing to load correctly and the error messages the site displays instead are so big they are covering the text in the main page so I can't read the top few posts on each page. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HexMachina Posted May 14, 2015 Share Posted May 14, 2015 I am having difficulty accessing the my content page. It gets stuck at about 25% loaded. I'm talking about now too, when the search function is not disabled. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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