Our ISP web administrator has requested that I disable our UBB Version 5.44a because of an on-going problem with "blank screens" and "Server returned no data" errors as reported in both MSIE and Netscape browsers.
As it was explained to me, what is happening is the UBB is crashing their servers.
We have had this commercial version running since early March, and have had periodic problems described above all during this time. The situation has finally reached a point that it became intolerable.
Please let me know what can be done. I can provide the ISP admin e-mail address if you need it. He has agreed to discuss this problem with the makers of the software or their agent(s).
It sounds like your web host's server is not up to handling your UBB. You should upgrade to 5.47b immediately, as it's much kinder to the server. Then start searching for a new web host...
------------------ Charles Capps, Moderator, Post-Install Troubleshooting PLEASE NOTE: Due to time limitations, I do not provide UBB support via email.
I am an administrator at the web host mentioned in the previous reply. We run multi-processing load balanced servers which handle more than 1,000,000 hits a day. The servers load averages are less than 1.00 unless something is very wrong. When the UBB board is hit it causes the cgi calls to zombie. These calls cause the apache process they were called from to block port 80 requests from getting to other apache children. We run multiple UBB boards on these servers without incident. The UBB scripts used on this site have been in place for almost 10 months now. Only the forum files and one of the configuration files have been modified since the time of install. What could be causing the scripts to start crashing apache processes all of the sudden on multiple servers? Apache, nor any apache modules have not been upgraded.
thank you,
Franklin Marmon Internet Connect Services Missoula, MT 59808 800-755-1566
How are the servers load balanced? The UBB does not work well over network shares.
Are the UBBs all recent (5.46 or above) versions?
------------------ Charles Capps, Moderator, Post-Install Troubleshooting PLEASE NOTE: Due to time limitations, I do not provide UBB support via email.
I've had the same problem with my ISP. Someone there told me certain CGI scripts were the problem and offered to fix them for us. We didn't take them up on it, because we were planning to switch providers.
We've been experiencing UBB crashes at least weekly for quite a while. We've totally outgrown our ISP anyway, so I decided to switch us to Open Topic.
Oh, we're running 5.47a.
[This message has been edited by LilRed (edited 12-12-2000).]
The UBB does *NOT* do well on NFS. It does *NOT* use OS-provided file locks. It uses a semaphore file instead. OS-provided file locking is difficult enough, but semaphore files are NEVER reliable with NFS. I can not possibly urge you enough to STOP attempting to load balance the UBB. It is very likely that a good share of your lockup issues are being caused by NFS and the file locking methods.
------------------ Charles Capps, Moderator, Post-Install Troubleshooting PLEASE NOTE: Due to time limitations, I do not provide UBB support via email.
The blank screen in MSIE and the "document contained no data" in Netscape happens most likely because the cgi terminated unexpected. I suppose you can check for the error message in the server log.
All we can do is hope - I doubt it will happen though. Flock's not exactly 100% cross-platform.
------------------ Charles Capps, Moderator, Post-Install Troubleshooting PLEASE NOTE: Due to time limitations, I do not provide UBB support via email.
Successfully upgraded our forum to 5.47b, but it still produces "blank screens", which has been interpreted by our ISP admin to mean the server crashes.
They are planning to move the forum to a non-nfs server, which is hoped to resolve this problem.
That might do the trick. Also ensure that, if there is no (or a very high) limit on resources that each CGI script can use...
------------------ Charles Capps, Moderator, Post-Install Troubleshooting PLEASE NOTE: Due to time limitations, I do not provide UBB support via email.
The UBB was moved to and is running from a single web server. This appears to have solved the problem. We still experience blank pages from time to time, but for the most part, the forum operates as expected.
Thanks to all involved who provided input and solutions.
------------------ Charles Capps, Moderator, Post-Install Troubleshooting PLEASE NOTE: Due to time limitations, I do not provide UBB support via email.
