UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.classic UBB.classic 5 Support Ultimate BB Performance Issues - Win2000

Hello. I just installed UltimateBB free version for a test. Everything seems to work fine but when posting a message it takes like 20 seconds - a very long time?? Ultimate BB freeware version 2000d. Active Perl version 5.60.618. Windows 2000 Pro - 256mb RAM on a PIII-500mhz, using Personal Web Server. I plan to migrate this to my ISP later, which is on NT 4.0, but want to test it on this box at home before I buy the license. I'm no network administrator by any means, but surely I have enough horsepower to run this thing don't I??? The PC is also a fresh install of Win2k Pro with no other programs running. Are there any special configs I can do to make it run faster? If you'd like to see what I'm talking about - go to http://guthary.dns2go.com/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi (it's just a real quick test installation). Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[This message has been edited by guthary (edited 10-26-2000).]

That *IS* weird. I registered (as TOCie) and posted in your General forum.

I'm moving this to the Win32 install forum for further followups. The NT/Win2k gurus hang out there.

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Charles Capps, Moderator, Post-Install Troubleshooting
PLEASE NOTE: Due to time limitations, I do not provide UBB support via email.

I'm having the exact same problem. I installed the free version yesterday. My server is almost identical to yours: Win2K server, 256MB ram, big fast disk, IIS5 and everything runs fast!

After getting UBB installed, it takes between 2 and 3 minutes to post a message.

I really need to get this resolved before I roll UBB onto my public site. Any ideas would be greatly appreciated!

Oh good I'm not the only one...

I just installed the freeware UBB version on my w2k adv. server box this morning, using IIS 5 (SP1). Messageboard works great... it's just SLOW in posting/making new msgs. System is a dualie PPro 200, 192MB ram, latest version of ActivePerl.

Could this be a perl/cgi optimization thing with IIS 5? I'm still researching... any feedback from the UBB guru's around here will be greatly appreciated... if I discover anything I'll be sure to post it.

K2 www.hardfought.org

Same thing here, Win2k AS, SP1, 256ram/dual PII/350. Glad to at least see Im not the only one <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Question - how was Win2k installed on these machines? Was it already installed on them out of the box as a preconfigured option from a VAR - i.e. dell, etc.?

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Regards,

Brett Harris
Director of Technical Information, Infopop Corporation

Not in my case... it was a custom install. I chose 'standard PC' install to keep ACPI from sticking most of my devices on IRQ 9... other than that it was pretty straight forward. I installed SP1 *right* after w2k adv server was installed... then installed ActivePerl 5.6 shortly there after. I followed the steps found via the winNT install guide on how to map perl/cgi to IIS 4 (pretty much the same steps for IIS 5) which worked no problems, and still works... it's just sloooowww.

I am running 2 MRTG scrips in the background which run every five minutes (they also use perl) on the same server... I though maybe they might be the problem so I disabled them. Nothing changed in terms of the UBB posting speed <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" />

To me this just seems like a case of the cgi scripts taking their sweet time to run... ? Is there a way to configure IIS 4/5 so its optimized for perl/cgi?

EDIT - I checked what ISAPI filters were installed on IIS 5 (I didnt add them, they were there by default)... and these are global, so they affect any and all web servers being ran on the box. They are, in this order...

sspifilt - priority high
compression - high
md5filt - low
fpexedll.dll - low
rpcproxy - low

Maybe these make a difference.

[This message has been edited by k2_1971 (edited 10-26-2000).]

OK I think I found something... I read in the ActivePerl help guide that there is a dynamic link library for perl called PerlIS.dll that you can load in the IIS 4/5 ISAPI filter module that's supposed to speed up any calls made by the webserver to run anything perl-related (i.e. UBB)

Well... I cant get the damn thing to load <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /> ANY filter I try to load manually shows as 'not loaded'... I've restarted the WWW service and even rebooted the box itself... no go. Any ideas? am I even on the right track?

There are a few thousand UBB's running IIS5 fast & successfully out of the box so we'll need to look for what's different.

Please check the mapping of .cgi and .pl Either perl.exe %s %s [case matters] or perlis.dll is fine. I doubt, however, the mapping is at issue.

I notice that the scripts run normally when simply reading files -- suggesting there is nothing amiss with the perl or its mapping.

The slow processes are the file write routines. In this case I would check the permissions. These are distinctly different in NT5 [and somewhat confusing if you are just using your NT4 background like me <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> ]

What are the perms in the /ubb directories and their files? RWXD or even full control is required for the IUSR_[computername]. Is there a domain controller involved here? I've seen problems where domain controller configuration overrides the local machine.

Experiment with the permissions making sure the server can at least RWXD in the necessary directories.

Run the ubb_test.cgi script from your zip distribution to see what it says.


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Michael Farris
OpenTopic Product Manager + UBB Enthusiast

Thank you for the lead... doing some re-configuration and testing right now. I'll post a before and after settings list here shortly.

BHarris: We installed Win2K server on this in-house.

MichaelF:
-Mappings: all are exactly per the docs.

-Security: my cgi-bin and ubb directories all have full read/write/modify perms. Even if it was a security issue, it would result in something not working, not a 2-3 minute delay. Or am I missing something?

- ubb_test.cgi: all ran and all passed.

I agree--I think something is going on with file write routines.

[This message has been edited by dannyfms (edited 10-26-2000).]

Wow - are we actually making HEADWAY here? <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/laugh.gif" alt="" /> I can hardly STAND it!!!!!

The reason I ask about Win2k is that many OS's are diffed or blown on to the box by OEM's such that upgrades or new installs of languages or developer tools fail as the files were never actually 'installed', they just magically appeared..

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Regards,

Brett Harris
Director of Technical Information, Infopop Corporation

OK! It's fixed... and it's lightning fast now <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Before - perl.exe %s %s was mapped to .pl and .cgi
Security permissions for all of the sub-folders under ubb (cgi-bin, noncgi, variable_files, members, help) were set to read, execute, list and write.

After - I switched perl.exe %s %s to perlIS.dll for the .pl and .cgi mappings (the activeperl 5.6 documentation advises to use this dll since its faster than the executable... and it is)
This next step is what fixed my problem... on all the sub folders listed above, I also added modify permissions to each folders security settings. BAM worked like a charm.

Thx for the feedback here people... hope this solution works out for the rest of ya <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I just did the same - changed the .pl and .cgi mappings from perl.exe to perlIS.dll - and everything's working like a charm now!! <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

btw - per the above questions, mine was just a standard installation of Win2K Pro and IIS 5- no OEM install or anything... Thanks for all the help, the problem seems to be solved!

K2, you are a prince. Your changes worked like a charm.

Thanks!

-dan

i actually have my UBB 5.46 setup on this server:

pIII 500
10.5 GB 7200 RPM HDD
128 MB RAM
56K I-NET CONNECTION

i have perl installed at d:perl
i have the ubb setup at g:index

it works superfast no matter what setting i have it on, but i think i will keep it at the .dll file.

thanks for the tip

Bump for customer FAQ

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Regards,

Brett Harris
Director of Technical Information, Infopop Corporation

Is this a problem in older versions of the UBB?