why is the forum always down?

C

chronic9

Supreme [H]ardness
Joined
Aug 18, 2004
Messages
5,854
I dont want to seem like an asshole, who wants to much. So iam just asking this out of curiousity, why is forum always down? Is it due to bandwith limits or some other bigger reason? Heck if [H] needs cash for a new server, id be willing to donate a few bucks for a good cause.

Bring back the [H] T-shirts and stuff. i wanna buy sum of that stuff!!
 
From an administrative point of view this place has to be a NIGHTMARE! With the number of users constantly posting bandwith usage has to be through the roof, TONS of MYSQL stuff happening behind the scenes to go wrong at any given time, a server who's load is probably near max 24/7 and a staff that has to constanly be chewing coffee grounds to stay on top of things. Quite frankly I'm suprised this place doesn't go down more OFTEN!

Kudos!
 
It's not so much a server/hardware issue as it is a database problem with MySQL. It simply wasn't designed to handle the volume we get here.
 
just out of curiosity, are there databases that can handle it? oracle? and what would be involved in doing some kind of site mirroring/load balancing where two databases automatically synchronize.. or is that just crazy talk?

and that [M] site has just as much traffic, i don't recall ever seeing it down for long periods of time..

and now more off topic.. what kind of bandwidth does a forum use? for example.. i am hosting a phpBB.. what kind of bandwidth does it use with say 200 posts per day? 1000 posts per day? 10 posts per day? does anyone have numbers? i came up with some.. but i could be way off..

edit: i am realizing that this forum has 1 image.. that's it.. in the top left corner that is a total of 5kb.. my phpBB has themes that are 150kb or templates, whatever they are.. so i guess taking away all images would be the largest thing to cut down on bandwidth.
 
yeah the forum is always down, but at least we aren't stuck with that shitty FuseTalk stuff they use over at AT
 
I too am interested in finding out about how much bandwith this forum uses? must be a HUGE amount. If there is so much trouble with SQL why dont they just move to a higher level of database. Its not like there is no database that can support enormus amounts of posts.
 
oc forums gets a lot of volume and they arent down so much. Kyle must be ocing the db server :p.
 
scottatwittenberg said:
edit: i am realizing that this forum has 1 image.. that's it.. in the top left corner that is a total of 5kb.. my phpBB has themes that are 150kb or templates, whatever they are.. so i guess taking away all images would be the largest thing to cut down on bandwidth.
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:eek:I count way way more then one image...
look at anything that isn't text, lines, buttons, or checkbox. count all those. those are all images.

I am guessing off the top of my head about 50.
 
to answer the topic.
because of very poor administration.
any half decent tech could make or buy a better server.
im not knocking the admins or the hardware, i appreciate they probably bust their ass for this forum, but being down for a week is just plain due to bad management. (unless there is a good reason, like the hosting company blew up, along with their offsite backups, and if they dont HAVE offsite backups, find another company)
i mean, this site is VERY useful for tech info, and it being down limits sources...so eh.
 
the idea of a hardware enthusiast site, and as known as harcocp not being able to maintain a forum is quite sad

maybe instead of spending money on law suits. they should upgrade their equipment
 
As much as I like, and respect Kyle and Steve, over the last few years, this site seems to have had more forums problems than any of the other major hardware sites, (I'm talking the top ten sites). I'm not an admin, I don't know jack about hosting or running a forum, but there is really no excuse for this.

Lethal said:
It's not so much a server/hardware issue as it is a database problem with MySQL. It simply wasn't designed to handle the volume we get here.
Click to expand...

Lethal if it's a MySQL issue, is there an improved system that can be purchased? If so, what is it, how much is it? I'd be willing to donate $20 or so to start a fund to buy said software. Quite frankly the [H] are my favorite forums and I want to help.
 
scottatwittenberg said:
just out of curiosity, are there databases that can handle it? oracle?
Click to expand...

Databases like Oracle are much more robust, but they are not free and can cost tens of thousand of dollars or more.

I have no idea what the actual bandwidth usage is here, but imagine it's considerable. :)
 
scottatwittenberg said:
and now more off topic.. what kind of bandwidth does a forum use? for example.. i am hosting a phpBB.. what kind of bandwidth does it use with say 200 posts per day? 1000 posts per day? 10 posts per day? does anyone have numbers? i came up with some.. but i could be way off..
Click to expand...

i have tons of crap on my site and my forum is an image hog, i host all my images from car shows and other stuff and they get a nice amount of views.....im nowhere near my 50GB a month limit either.
 
Yeah and yet larger forums like SA and forums with similar size like genmay and the ocforums manage to stay up.... and ocforums has never asked for donations.......
 
corrosive23 said:
Yeah and yet larger forums like SA and forums with similar size like genmay and the ocforums manage to stay up.... and ocforums has never asked for donations.......
Click to expand...

yep....I know Kyle and the admins have a lot of other things on their plates, but still....
 
I is great to have ya back up and running... was starting to feel lost. I didn't know what to do with my lunch break today... ..err... yesterday
 
I find it pretty rediculous that a site like this is having these problems. There are much larger sites offering more information, including some that serve millions of photos a day in a forum layout. There's not much excuse for a forum run by a supposed computer tech behemoth like hardocp to keep going down. I certainly am amused by the excuses.

Fortunately I don't invest a lot of time or energy in to this site!

Hopefully they can get their act together, fix whats going on (or at least be completely upfront about the problems) so they can save face and be better supported by their users. It's a shame every time this forum goes down that people get fed up with it, but eventually if they don't fix it someone else will replace this forum completely with something better. There may be other forums better suited to certain topics, but there's a lot of good insight here and a good coverage of all topics even if you don't always get your questions answered.
 
Yeah, I'd imagine there's a huge amount of traffic here, but genmay uses the same system and it like never, ever goes down (unless someone hacks it, in which case it's back up in like 15 minutes). It seems like there has got to be a better way, I absolutely love [H] but it's sad that I'm to the point where I'm actually having to find another hardware forum to make an account at to use while [H] is down.

Again, not dissing [H] or anything, but... Something needs to be done. Is it a matter of money? I agree with the orig. poster that I wouldn't hesitate a second to donate a few bucks to HardForum or, even better, buy some [H] hats/shirts (PLEASE!!!!).
 
RS3RS said:
Yeah, I'd imagine there's a huge amount of traffic here, but genmay uses the same system and it like never, ever goes down (unless someone hacks it, in which case it's back up in like 15 minutes). It seems like there has got to be a better way, I absolutely love [H] but it's sad that I'm to the point where I'm actually having to find another hardware forum to make an account at to use while [H] is down.

Again, not dissing [H] or anything, but... Something needs to be done. Is it a matter of money? I agree with the orig. poster that I wouldn't hesitate a second to donate a few bucks to HardForum or, even better, buy some [H] hats/shirts (PLEASE!!!!).
Click to expand...
actually we've never been hacked... :p

it's not easy to maintain genmay in it's current state either, the hardware we're running on is very outdated and could use a refresh, but i'm always tweaking it just that little bit to get us another 6 months out of the current stuff.

the [H] guys are more than welcome to call on me anytime they need some advice or pointers, i'm more than willing to help out.
 
Emrett said:
maybe instead of spending money on law suits. they should upgrade their equipment
Click to expand...

they sued [H] remember? :rolleyes:
 
I thinks it's great... get that 'new' feeling back everytime. I temporarily lost my way here for a second, so cool! Woot! :p
 
scottatwittenberg said:
and now more off topic.. what kind of bandwidth does a forum use? for example.. i am hosting a phpBB.. what kind of bandwidth does it use with say 200 posts per day? 1000 posts per day? 10 posts per day? does anyone have numbers? i came up with some.. but i could be way off..

edit: i am realizing that this forum has 1 image.. that's it.. in the top left corner that is a total of 5kb.. my phpBB has themes that are 150kb or templates, whatever they are.. so i guess taking away all images would be the largest thing to cut down on bandwidth.
Click to expand...
My website avg's currently about 75 posts a day. The most i've ever used in badwidth in a month was 2 GB, normally its closer to 1GB per day however. Your right images are the largest bandwidth hog, and hugely popular websites normally cut images first. I allow all my users to use avatars and its still not taking up anywhere near my max of 50GB's a month.

If you care to check it out you can find it at www.underworld93.com
 
This thread is rediculous. Most of you guys who are bitching and bashing the [H] for having downtime probably have no idea what kind of work it takes to manage a huge server like this. It will make any man go insane, it is not easy work. Even more importantly, why is it that all you can do is complain? Have any one of you ever thanked Kyle, Steve, or any other staff member for the work they put into the site. They all bust their asses for us making sure the forums are in tip top shape, yet they only hear about it when something goes wrong. Aside from maybe Kyle from advertising, the people that work for the site do not get paid (or, atleast I woudln't think they do). Maybe you guys should start to appriciate the work they do to keep the forums up the other 95% of the time. They give up there free time for all of us, whether it goes appriciated or not.

In my opinion, unless you think you could be doing a better job, shut the hell up!
 
To give an idea of how much bandwidth a page uses in IE go to File, Save As, Web Page Single Archive and then look at the resulting filesize. Thats for one page then multiply that by however many pages you view.
 
Viper87227 said:
This thread is rediculous. Most of you guys who are bitching and bashing the [H] for having downtime probably have no idea what kind of work it takes to manage a huge server like this. It will make any man go insane, it is not easy work. Even more importantly, why is it that all you can do is complain? Have any one of you ever thanked Kyle, Steve, or any other staff member for the work they put into the site. They all bust their asses for us making sure the forums are in tip top shape, yet they only hear about it when something goes wrong. Aside from maybe Kyle from advertising, the people that work for the site do not get paid (or, atleast I woudln't think they do). Maybe you guys should start to appriciate the work they do to keep the forums up the other 95% of the time. They give up there free time for all of us, whether it goes appriciated or not.

In my opinion, unless you think you could be doing a better job, shut the hell up!
Click to expand...

I understand.. but the problem is that a lot of people in the past offered help with mySQL and trying to improve the queries; but for some reason, Kyle doesn’t want it.
 
Guys suggesting using Oracle. I have used Oracle on many projects and the way they license Oracle is by the power of the machine it is running on. I just purchased the smallest license they have which is $30k/year.

I doubt Kyle is getting anywhere near that kind of income from NewEgg banner ads ;)

Its a free service Kyle offers us, if he wants to bring down the site for a week so that he can polish the freakin CPU heatsink, that is his call. Running a DB and keeping it up is a major headache, no way would I do that for free. And if I had little whiners complaining, I would not be as kind as Kyle.
 
I got a copy of Oracle enterprise server 8.1.7 I am willing to donate to teh [H] HEH
 
Marklar said:
I got a copy of Oracle enterprise server 8.1.7 I am willing to donate to teh [H] HEH
Click to expand...

Do not get me wrong anyone can freely download the latest and greatest copy of Oracle. Hell I have a copy of 10G sitting right next to me that did not cost me one cent. You can even use Oracle for dev purposes free of charge. They charge you for support, and using it in a production system.
 
See if you can get ahold of Tony the administrator of PBNation.com. That site runs VB and has almost 125,000 members, but with a little less as the most online record. Their site works 99% of the time, but they have alot of money generated from ads and supporting members. Tony is a great guy and I'm sure he'd be glad to help you out.
 
M|22 said:
actually we've never been hacked... :p

it's not easy to maintain genmay in it's current state either, the hardware we're running on is very outdated and could use a refresh, but i'm always tweaking it just that little bit to get us another 6 months out of the current stuff.

the [H] guys are more than welcome to call on me anytime they need some advice or pointers, i'm more than willing to help out.
Click to expand...
I would love for you to diagnose our problem(s) and fix it. Let me know when you have the time and I will have you and Cliff sit down together and you can fix it for us. Thanks for the offer.
 
Lethal said:
It's not so much a server/hardware issue as it is a database problem with MySQL. It simply wasn't designed to handle the volume we get here.
Click to expand...

Not neccessarily, Howardforums.comn regularly has thousands on at once(it has over 2k on right now) and winamp and webhosting talk do as well. Most of the really huge sites i see having forums use vbull. I do not think it is totally a mysql problem. That being said i am not a MySQL admin either..:)

Given the diffulculties of switching to a new OS and new hardware plus new software it's impressive that the forums have been as stable as they have been..:)
 
In fact, I will make an open invitation to all of those of you that want to diagnose and fix the problem. Now in this I mean that you study our database and the optimizations we have made and THEN make suggestions. Simply spewing a list of "DO THIS" without first looking at our database is not acceptable. So for those of you that have the knowledge to back up the complaining, I will get you scheduled one at a time. Please also make sure you have documentation of you optimizations as simply every idea will not be implemented just "because you said it is great."

We will let M|22 go first. Please provide me with your name, address, phone number to start off with. There will of course be some other pertinent information that we will need to collect before you are given any access to our servers.
 
Jr. Woodchuck said:
My website avg's currently about 75 posts a day. The most i've ever used in badwidth in a month was 2 GB, normally its closer to 1GB per day however. Your right images are the largest bandwidth hog, and hugely popular websites normally cut images first. I allow all my users to use avatars and its still not taking up anywhere near my max of 50GB's a month.

If you care to check it out you can find it at www.underworld93.com
Click to expand...

I do not have the average posts per day handy; however the community i assist with administraiton duties has 1137 members, 86731 posts, and probably (this is a guess and could be way to high) averages more than one hundred posts a day running ikonboard. The front end of the site is php nuke. Both sites run off the same MySQL database. So far this month we have over 1.3 million hits, 4739 visitors of which 876 are unique. We have moved 7.2 gigs so far this month. We do allow small avatars to be uploaded.

Of course this is peanuts compared to [H] but it gies you an idea. I could probably chop that by removing the avatars..right now though we have 100 gigs of transfer so we are not too concerened about it yet..<G> The community i am tlaking about is the Christian Gamer's Alliance and the link is in my sig.
 
hescominsoon said:
Not neccessarily, Howardforums.comn regularly has thousands on at once(it has over 2k on right now) and winamp and webhosting talk do as well. Most of the really huge sites i see having forums use vbull. I do not think it is totally a mysql problem. That being said i am not a MySQL admin either..:)

Given the diffulculties of switching to a new OS and new hardware plus new software it's impressive that the forums have been as stable as they have been..:)
Click to expand...

I sent Howard an email asking for his hardware and software optimizations or resources that were used.

Also, let it be known that we have looked to hire Vbulletin specialists in the past and everyone that we get in contact with will not take on the responsibility of a forum of this size that moves as fast as it does. If you know of someone with the track record and resume that shows different, please send him my way.
 
Database Management and hardware Jedi are two different things. If I recall, the [H] servers are fairly hefty spec wise. I think the baby bs going on here is retarded...this isn't a home box /hobby forum. Its not like you have to pay for it (and paying for General Mayhem is less then nothing). Now that its back and my "shakes" are going away, I can resume goofing off at work. Thanks Kyle/Cliff and all the rest. :D

I am interested in knowing if this came about from an upgrade to Redhat? I thought I read that on the front page. Hopefully the experience can be relayed in a post for us interested nerds ;)
 
We have looked into many solutions regarding forums. I also see some comparisons being made to forums like GM and SA. Ours are a bit different from theirs. People come here and search/mine for information they need. GM and SA are more of an online chat in the form of a forum. I hope you understand the difference.

One a given day, we have around 5500 registered users on our boards. We usually have about 450 to 550 new threads posted per day with about 5000 new posts per day. Now that alone is some fairly heavy activity. Now consider into that, we have between 300,000 to 500,000 unique IPs hit the forums here every 30 days that will use between 7,000,000 to 15,000,000 paqe serves. That is a big window, but it fluctuates depending on what is going on in our forums. Then please keep in mind that we allow multiple PMs, multiple thread subscriptions, and a host of other features that many sites do NOT allow. The biggest being we allow all of our users to SEARCH our database for answers. The search of course is the biggy, but things like showing users online, thread jump, thread views and stats, etc...
 
I'm not going to bitch about why the [H] was down...But I'm happy to see Kyle and others are working on it, Open diagnose and Inviting Vb specialist/SQL Pro's to test/suggest is a Great idea.

Many thanks to Kyle and [H] team for bringing [H] back :)
 
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