Generated in 0.018 seconds in which 0.002 seconds were spent on a total of 9 queries.

When both numbers are fairly low, everything is pretty much fine.

But what's the issue when the first number rises dramatically while the second one stays normal:

Generated in 9.149 seconds in which 0.032 seconds were spent on a total of 13 queries.

What would cause only the first part to skyrocket?

Hmmm. just got a [/i]"Generated in 20.513 seconds in which 0.017 seconds were spent on a total of 9 queries."[/i]

Funny thing is that I just doubled the RAM on my server about 10 mins ago. Running on 2 gigs now after being on just 1 GB for the past year...

I get this all the time, but my server is b0ged so it'd explaine it...

so, the database returned the answer in .017 seconds, but then it took about 20 to process the answer and display it.

sounds like a machine with a ton of RAM but slow someplace else. CPU slow(ish)? drives slow(ish)?

To be honest, I've never looked at the way Rick wrote this cache stuff to see if the board needs to complete a cache creation/update operation before the page loads. If it does, and your discs are slow, that might do it.

Maybe the query that was run returned quickly, but returned a huge array of data and the CPU was too slow to operate on it faster than 20 seconds?

Either could be true. Rick would have a better idea how to look, and which to update next.

Right, so if the first part is what's delaying the output, then I might be doing the wrong thing by concentrating on fine-tuning "my.cnf".

After upgrading to 2GB I just bumped the "key_buffer" to 256M (and the "table_cache" to 512). Not sure what I need exactly but I have around 700 users simultaneously at peak time and a rather large database to deal with.

Funny think is that the CPU shouldn't really be overworked as it's a Dual Xeon and in the stats it seems like it's plain sailing all the way. The drive isn't SCSI or even SATA, maybe that's the issue. But some of these delays are coming when the number of people online is about 150 and not 700. Very strange...

As long as the 2nd number, time spent on queries, is low then your MySQL server is running and handling the queries fine. Do you have SSH access to the server? If it's a unix box then when you notice the slow times you can run 'top' on the server and get an idea of what's going on at the server level. Maybe a high load average at the time, something of that nature.

I assume you're still running 6.5? I'd keep an eye if the slow times appear on any particular pages. From the looks of the debug line it just appears that for some reason the server has a lot going on at that particular time.

Thanks guys. On a side note, if I'm having time-out issues when backing up the DB via the CP, which my.cnf setting can I alter to make sure that the backup runs smoothly?

You also might want to look at the php.ini in the area of how many seconds are allowed to process scripts.. That's where time out errors generally come from.

;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;
; Resource Limits ;
;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;

max_execution_time = 240 ; Maximum execution time of each script, in seconds
max_input_time = 240 ; Maximum amount of time each script may spend parsing request data
memory_limit = 16M ; Maximum amount of memory a script may consume (16MB)

these are normally set at like 60 seconds etc..

Also, if I decide to take a short-cut and just use the "my-huge.cnf" settings, is there anything there that I really should NOT have enabled (regardless of mem issues)?

no should be fine. what version of mysql ?