Problems connecting.

[Ryker]

There are times when I have a really hard time connecting to the forums. It's strange because usually I can connect to the site with no problem.

Usually the connection times out or it loads a blank page. I don't think it has anything to do with the forum software (vBulletin) because I actually had this problem when we were still using IPB; however, not as much.


Are there any possibilities as to what might be happening and/or solutions?

[Thomas Knierim]

It wasn't your connection. Yesterday the database server was down for a few hours.

Cheers, Thomas

[Ryker]

Is this something that happens often (as in every single day) because it wasn't just a problem I had yesterday. It's a problem I have every day & it's been that way since I joined. :p

[Thomas Knierim]

Hmm... So far I have noticed only occasional and brief server downtimes, but this is only my subjective impression. I will investigate the problem. Today I have hooked up thebigview.com to an availability monitoring service.

Cheers, Thomas

[Trevor]

Hi Thomas. I noticed that the time is wrong when I post. Yesterday was daylight savings time. We are to go back one hour. Just thought I'd let you know.

[Thomas Knierim]

By default the forum displays GMT+7 (Bangkok/Hanoi/Jakarta time). Did you set local time and DST in your profile (User CP/options)?

Cheers, Thomas

[Trevor]

Thanks, will do it.

[Trevor]

Thomas, what is the difference between a member and an active member?

[Thomas Knierim]

Thomas, what is the difference between a member and an active member?

An active member is a member with recent posts. After a certain threshold (30-60 days, I forgot the exact value) a user is considered "inactive" by the system if there are no new posts.

Cheers, Thomas

[Michael]

Thomas, I have also been encountering difficulties connecting. This has happened on three separate days. tbv has been inaccessible for hours at a time - up to 12. The most recent today from approx 11 am gmt to approx 4 pm gmt.

Regards,

Michael

[Thomas Knierim]

Michael: The most recent today from approx 11 am gmt to approx 4 pm gmt.

Yes, I had the same problem yesterday. I have been monitoring the domain for a while. There seem to be 2-3 connection outages per day on average, although each one is fairly short, not longer than 5 or 10 minutes. The the database server also has occasional connection problems. That's when you see a database error.

Looks as if the hosting company is maxing out server capacity, if you ask me. I will contact them and ask if they have any suggestions about how to improve this.

Cheers, Thomas

[Ryker]

Sounds like a plan to me. I mean, if you're paying for the place to be accessible, you kind of expect it to be accessible. :lol:

[Michael]

Hi Thomas,

Funny problem cropped up. I couldn't access page 2 of 'Are All Boddhisatvas', tried several times over a couple of days. Now I can't access page 2 of 'Jesus Camp'.

[Thomas Knierim]

Michael: Now I can't access page 2 of 'Jesus Camp'.

Neither can I. - Looks like data corruption in this thread.

Cheers, Thomas

[Vlatko]

Here is another problem:

Images in The Right Eye of Horus - Sacred Geometry and the Design of Existence thread, which is in the "essays section", can't be seen. Images in that essay are very important for understanding it, since the author is writing about the geometry.

I’ve tried different browsers, other machines, various settings, etc. to view those pictures but it won’t work.

Can you do something about it, Thomas.

Cheers, Vlatko

[Michael]

Thomas,

You confirm problems on the Jesus Thread, what about the Bodd thread?

What is your opinion on the source of the problem (I'm asking from a non-techi reality)?

[Thomas Knierim]

Vlatko: Images in The Right Eye of Horus - Sacred Geometry and the Design of Existence thread, which is in the "essays section", can't be seen.

The images are back now. They are hot-linked to the author's site and it might happen -if the author's server is down- that the images cannot be loaded. If there should be problems in future, you can always go to Philip's (the author) site to check.

Michael: What is your opinion on the source of the problem (I'm asking from a non-techi reality)?

Since this is a technical question I can only give a technical answer. This sort of data corruption is probably a result of a failed database transaction which is in turn caused either by DB connection problems or by race conditions during concurrent access. Such errors are notoriously difficult to trace and debug. I think we won't see them very often, however, since the vBulletin Board is a fairly mature software.

Cheers, Thomas

[Vlatko]

The images are back now. They are hot-linked to the author's site and it might happen -if the author's server is down- that the images cannot be loaded. If there should be problems in future, you can always go to Philip's (the author) site to check.

No they're not Thomas, and they can't be found on the author's site. Only the first three pictures are on that post for the "divine proportion", but when you scroll down the rest of the pictures are not there.

Cheers, Vlatko

[Thomas Knierim]

Vlatko: Only the first three pictures are on that post for the "divine proportion", but when you scroll down the rest of the pictures are not there.

Yes, you are right. It seems that Philip has taken the article out. I guess we're both out of luck in this case.

Cheers, Thomas

[Trevor]

Hi Thomas. I have had to log in four times in the last five minutes. It denies me access everytime I switch forums.

[Thomas Knierim]

Let me give you an update on the connection problem issue. I have run an availability monitoring service (mywebalert.com) on thebigview.com for the past month. The monthly report came in yesterday and it didn't look too good. There was approx. 2.5% downtime distributed all over the time scale. I forwarded the report to my hosting company and they offered me to migrate my account to another server.
I accepted and now we are looking forward to being moved to another machine with (hopefully) less traffic.

Cheers, Thomas

[Ryker]

Thank you very much Thomas! :)
I'm glad everything was figured out. How long do you expect until the move?

(As a side-note though: lately I haven't been having as many problems as I did previously.)

[Michael]

Thanks Thomas. I haven't found any hiccups in the last week or so.