News About Recent Downtime and Slowness

[RpNation]

Hello RpNation Members,


This is just a quick message to all members directly from the Administration to let them know what is happening on the site. The admins are aware that there has been two days in a row where the Server has experienced database errors or some other form of downtime. We are looking into the issue and Ghan_04 is hard at work trying to figure out what maybe causing the problem.


What we know: right now we know that the server issues are being caused because of an increase in memory over the past month. However in recent days memory usage has skyrocketed on the site.


About the slowness of the site in particular, we are still looking into the matter as best as we can. A current theory is that we might have experienced more activity growth than expected and RpN might just have grown too larger for our current Server (which RpN and RPZ shared before the merger). However we do not want to make any assumptions at this time.


We will keep you updated on whatever news we have from our findings. We hope to resolve the Site's sluggishness and downtime as soon as possible.


Thanks,


RpN Administration

 

[Ghan]

The site crashes because the server runs out of memory. However, I'm more interested in the slowness, because I don't know what's causing that. I'd appreciate some details of what people have experienced where the site has been slow.

 

[Lance C]

Personally the site isn't slow until just before it crashes so it might just be a part of that. The site might also be getting overwhelmed- thus causing the slowness prior to crashing.


(Sorry if I wasn't supposed to post here, just offering possibilities)

 

[TheRoleplayingDovah]

I've not had any issues with the site being slow but that may be due to my net having issues to reasons beyond my control and I wouldn't have noticed anything. I have noticed the notifications are slow to load and it's quicker for me to view all of them. Could the additional memory be caused by the amount of characters people have uploaded on here and Superherozone?

 

[Ghan]

The crash happens as a direct result of the backup that runs at the same time. The backup takes a dump of the database, so while that happens, you're likely to experience slowness. Then, the system ends up running out of memory from the database dump, which results in the kernel killing the database process to save memory.

 

[DrTrollinski]

For me, the only slowness has been when posting. It continuously loads but doesn't seem to post what you want, and then 30 seconds - 1 minute later it actually posts.

 

[The Doorman]

I had a message pop up, now I wish I'd taken a screenshot, but it said the server was down and said to try refreshing but it didn't come back up for about seven minutes, not sure if I am helping but I am simply stating my personal experience.

 

[Egolegume]

Shoutbox lags out on me when I send text.


Forum Roleplays get laggy. In one instance I went to make a new sub-forum and in the original window it didn't do anything (as if the site froze). I resent the request for a new-subforum, but still nothing. When I reloaded my RP I suddenly had 5 sub-forums made, and the original window still hadn't changed (as if it still hadn't registered that I sent the request for a new-subforum). I was able to delete the extras, though briefly I was unable to access one of them to delete it.


Creating a forum roleplay is also slow. Same issue as above where in I would submit my RP and the page wouldn't load or change to show I had made a new RP. In one case I had to close and try again later. The second time I had about a 2 minute lag window, but eventually the page did reload with the RP created.


I often get lag switching between tab. Usually jumping from say the forum RPs to the general forums, it's nothing huge a few seconds, but enough to feel the difference. Sort of a jittery shift between tabs, things seem to load slower (I get a small thin loadbar across the top of the site page when this occurs).


I should note I get that load bar on the SB all the time too.

 

[Ghan]

For me, the only slowness has been when posting. It continuously loads but doesn't seem to post what you want, and then 30 seconds - 1 minute later it actually posts.

Does this happen every time you post? 


[QUOTE="The Doorman]I had a message pop up, now I wish I'd taken a screenshot, but it said the server was down and said to try refreshing but it didn't come back up for about seven minutes, not sure if I am helping but I am simply stating my personal experience.

[/QUOTE]
If this happened earlier today, it was probably due to some troubleshooting I was doing.

 

[MittyMittens]

I've noticed when I check my alerts, by hovering over the flag, that seems to sometimes cause a lot of issues that I personally get. Like it takes forever for them to load or I get an error message.

 

[The Dark Wizard]

I've noticed when I check my alerts, by hovering over the flag, that seems to sometimes cause a lot of issues that I personally get. Like it takes forever for them to load or I get an error message.

Can you recall the error message?

 

[The Gil]

I've been having slowness indeed, especially when it's time to post like it was said above, when sometimes it takes five minutes to post a post without any images or videos in it!

 

[Yvern]

It used to be insanely sluggish here, but now it seems fixed again!

 

[MoonlightJazmine]

I know when I get a message or something, the notification from tapatalk is WAY faster than here. If I don't refresh or click on messages or something, I don't even get a notification. At all.

 

[hephrakith]

I have not experienced any sort of crashing/lagging of the site, but perhaps the best idea is to go and purchase more memory for the server. This will probably prevent future dumps from crashing the server and all the posting lag. I know that I have no power in the decision, however this may be better for the long term.

 

[Yvern]

I have the same issue MoonlightJazmine!

 

[SaphireTsuki]

THis may just be me, but I sometimes get random hours long times where everything I post has to be clicked on two or three times, sometimes resulting in double posts. Usually around then I'll be told that Guru Meditation has crashed in an error thing, but lately that hasn't been happening. Today was the only day in a while that I haven't had slowness at some point, and for me it's still early.

 

[TheRoleplayingDovah]

I have noticed that my posts don't post instantly and am left wondering if i actually posted it. Most times, i have and end up double posting however, it was mainly an issue for me when i had my net issues and did not believe it was a site issue.

 

[Ghan]

Ok, posting issues seems to be a common problem. This is somewhat different since that's actually writing to the database rather than just reading.


Do you have slowness when loading threads or forums just to look at them? Is anything slow right now?

 

[SaphireTsuki]

Right now, no. But when the slowness hits everything slows down. Even typing, I'll have written two lines before anything shows up sometimes.

 

[The Gil]

Ok, posting issues seems to be a common problem. This is somewhat different since that's actually writing to the database rather than just reading.
Do you have slowness when loading threads or forums just to look at them? Is anything slow right now?

No, that's working fine for me. I didn't had a problem with it for about three days.

 

[Nekoni]

I have much slowness as well, I even have lags when I click my alerts or my conversation button. Many times it takes several minutes for one of my messages to be actually posted. The "unexpected error" pop-ups happen quite often as well.


Rpnation is getting too popular for it's own good

 

[ouroborosmedusa]

I may well be the only one here, but occasionally a page loads and the reply box has just sort of... vanished. The 'post reply' and 'more options' buttons are still there, but the writing box itself has poofed. That and general slowness intermittently.

 

[SaphireTsuki]

No, I get that too, but much more rarely.

 

[Wolf Rawrrr]

I was waiting for an official explanation. Figured it can't really be regular maintenance since it never takes you guys hours for it, and when it does there's always a heads up. It has been somewhat frustrating since the downtime happened to well, happen, at the exact times when I needed to use the site. Hope you get to the bottom of things soon *bark*


As for the slowness, all Wolf can report is that for me it was most noticeable right after the site coming back up, manifesting in the form of longer times to load the page after clicking a link and also - significantly longer time for the script to process messages and post them. Wish I could be more helpful than that *woof*