I've been running UBB 6.2.1 fine for several months, then inexplicably two nights ago the processes began running out of control and the board and control panel became totally inaccessible. I've spoken with my web host and they're telling me they have a limit of 50 processes, our board is suddenly using in excess of 100. When they go in and manually shut down processes I have only a few moments of very slow access before it locks me out again. I don't even have the ability to get into the CP so I can perform an upgrade in hopes of correcting the problem. Ideas?

http://www.banzaisquadron.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi

I just attempted to visit the board - I was told that CGI exection was suspended due to high load.

Your UBB is experiencing difficulties due to high server load resulting in poor performance (or the other way around - it's one of those chicken & egg things... load causes slowness, which causes more load, which causes further slowness...)

When things slow to a crawl in that manner, the UBB file locking routines tend to start falling over one another as the system gets confused as to whom the locks belong. That's why UBB instances just seem to hang in memory like that.

If things continue in this manner, you should begin seeking out another web hosting provider.

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Charles Capps
UBB.classic™ Developer
Having problems? Open up a support ticket!

When I was troubleshooting this with my webhost they were able to kill enough processes for me to get into the control panel once. The first thing I did was disable all the forums. Within 3 minutes the processes were out of control again. Why would it continue to perform this way when users can't even access it?

The server itself is overloaded - when the UBB runs, it just adds to the noise, which contributes further to the load...

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Charles Capps
UBB.classic™ Developer
Having problems? Open up a support ticket!

According to Earthlink (the webhost in this case) this account is the only one this server having any issues. In fact, according to the tech, there's another account running UBB on the same server, with no problems.

Aha! Earthlink has a number of known issues with their server and locked file locking.

FTP in - download the vars_pntf.cgi file. Edit it in Notepad. Find the line that reads:

q~Enabled~ => q~yes~,

Alter it to read:

q~Enabled~ => q~no~,

Upload, set permissions.

FTP to the /noncgi/cache-/pntf directory. Delete the "now.cgi" file.

Your UBB should pick right up after that.

I would highly suggest seeking out a new hosting provider. Earthlink's servers simply crumble when confronted with newer UBBs and the Recent Visitors feature when there's a lot of traffic involved.

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Charles Capps
UBB.classic™ Developer
Having problems? Open up a support ticket!

Well I did as suggested but it doesn't seem to have made a difference. Still can't access at all. Are there instructions somewhere for moving a production UBB from one host to another? I worry that I may just be moving the problem...

Mmm, I forgot to tell you to delete global.cgi in the cache-/lock directory. Oops.

Earthlink might also need to reboot the server to clean out the remaining locks on global.cgi

This has been an issue mainly on Earthlink, but any poorly tuned server could have the same problems easily.

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Charles Capps
UBB.classic™ Developer
Having problems? Open up a support ticket!

I have a request in for them to reboot, hopefully that will do it.

In your experience who is better host? I have a local webserver (IIS 5) hosting a few smaller sites right now, but the bandwidth is limited, how much does UBB require to function effectively?

Thanks for the help.

Unless you're on a pretty fast DSL line, I wouldn't advise trying to run any real website from your computer.

You can seek out recommended web hosts in our web hosting forum... We also provide web hosting ourselves. http://www.infopop.com/webhosting/

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Charles Capps
UBB.classic™ Developer
Having problems? Open up a support ticket!