We are using UBB 6.05 and suddenly we've run outta space. Checking folder sizes I've had the worst surprise of my life to see CACHE directories lavishing on 25MB of our payed webspace! We never imagined upgrading from 5.45 to 6.05 would make a 35MB board go to 120MB!!!
To top this, after we've bought some more space to feed the hungry UBB, now it doesn't show the updated threads! I had to disable Cache, clear it, FTP and manually remove the the contents of those folders and only then the forum updated! And yes, I've rebuilt forum stat files. And everything else, for that matter.
To my further surprise, testing revealed that even with Cache disabled, it still goes on writing stuff! I just opened a new topic and looked thru FTP at the Cache dir. Ugly programming!
So, please get rid of this idiotic system! Don't go the Internet Explorer way. That was a freebie and still sucked when it showed yeasteday's pages just to pretend is soooo fast... UBB costs dough and should not cheat its customers so blatantly! If you imagine that making UBB bigger and bigger will make us move to Open Topic or something, think twice. Ikonboard 3 is coming soon... and it's free.
Running 6.1.0.2 and I DO see a BIG difference in disk usage from 5.44b. If you paid for the UBB then why not download the latest version? You can turn off the caching system if you don't like it.
personally, we've had no issues running it. None.
And you didn't have to spend your money. As you clearly stated, Ikonboard is free... so why did you buy the UBB then?
Also you seem to be misunderstanding how the Cache works and should function.
The cache system will speed up the use of your board. It will update the cached pages automatically when someone posts new messages or replies....there is no need to rebuild the forums.
If you are making changes to the templates or forum settings sometimes you might need to clear the cache (Control Panel > Maintenance > Clear Cache) but you should never have to FTP and manually delete it or do anything else to make your changes to appear.
Once you resolved the installation issues with your board. You should upgrade to 6.1.0.2 as it does improve the cache system.
The cache helps improves your community's speed very greatly. It will also reduce the demand on the server so it should NEVER be disabled! In other words....do NOT turn off the cache.
If you are running out of web space then you simply outgrown your hosting and need to prune some posts or upgrade disk space.
I understand very well how cache works. I use Squid as proxy server for my network and THAT'S how a cache should work. At least with squid I define how much space it occupies.(*hint*)
What I was saying was that with Cache enabled our UBB seemed to have hallucinations. We WERE pruning topics to save space. But how can you do that, if the topic you've just deleted keeps showing up, uh? I looked for it in /ubb/Forum#/ directory and it wasn't there... Where was it? Guess... In Cache!
I've installed a test version of UBB 6.1.0.2 locally, to see how it works. I saw the PHP Accelerator and the compression functions it uses. Well, that proves my point! Dear CACHE was getting outta hand and we needed something to straighten it out. Like a compression routine...
Quote
From Accelerator.txt The UBB scripts can be very intense on your web server. In order to reduce the potential load, the scripts create cached copies of many commonly requested pages, such as topics, forums, and the forum summary. The UBB Accelerator uses a shortcut to get to these cached copies faster than the UBB scripts.
For additional speed, the UBB Accelerator may use zlib compression. The majority of web browsers can accept zlib compressed pages. Normally, zlib compressed pages are between 50% and 75% smaller than uncompressed versions. This can save your board quite a bit of bandwidth.
Actually you are right. The problem has started a long time ago, with processor intensive UBB (we've had to change hosts because of it). Then Infopop reduced the load adding CACHE. But then CACHE misbehaved, taking a lot of webspace and bandwidth so they added PHP Accelerator to compress it... What's next?
Already dear PHP Accelerator proved it has a personality. I upgraded the test board from beta to latest version, followed the instructions by the book, reopened the forum and... surprise! Only the frontpage was showing up. Trying to enter the "forums" themselves presented me with a "sorry, forum closed" message. And guess what scripts said that? PHP Accelerator! It worked only after I closed the board, disabled it, opened the board then re-enable it... Phuah!
So, yes, I agree these gimmicks improve speed, but to what cost? The text with "prune posts or buy more webspace", sorry, but sounds too much like "you need a intel Pentium processor to run Windows 95"...
We have less than 1000 users, with about 10.000 posts. And UBB has grown at 110-120 MBs... What when we have 10.000 users? One Gigabyte of webspace for UBB would be enough?
We are stuck with UBB from the times when it was the best forum around. Now we either lose all our members database and posts and move to a free board, or we pay for more and more space... Doesn't seem a fair treatment for a long-time customer.
I guess that how Infopop sees the future. We see it different. We see it with a small, decent board, running on our small fansite without getting fat as a whale. And we don't want anyone near our /cgi-bin, so don't even say Open Topic. Well, I guess I took it off my chest. There's no resolution to this matter except maybe better programming and new commercial strategy at Infopop. But I won't hold my breath...
Please, per my previous post, do fill out a trouble ticket. I'm assuming you haven't yet as I don't see any tickets with your issue...
The cache does not appear to be working correctly on your server. The problems you are describing are not normal. Once we can get your information, we'd be happy to look at it for you.
You are aware that the UBB only creates a cache for pages people actually read as opposed to the old UBB where it created an HTML file for every page regardless of whetehr it was read or not?
You are aware that clearing the cache via the control panel removes all of these? That the UBB will only regenerate files that someone has read?
At very worst the UBB should use the same disc space ( excepting private messages ) as the old UBB for the cache pages are nothing more then HTML.
The old UBB did not have private messages. If you have this enabled and your members use this feature that can use a fair amount of space.
That said the old ubbforums with 21k users never went over 210 megs of space even with private messages. I dumped the cache fairly regularly just by clicking the button in the control panel. Never pruned it, not once since we upgraded it to UBB 6
When I had UBB 5.47d I had to prune every month to keep below 500 MB of storage..this was barely 6 months in my most active forum, 2 years in the others. The HTML files and forum index took up a lot of space, so I'm glad they are gone in 6.1.0.2
People are emailing me saying they are getting software error messages and ocassionally someone says they hit the back button or another process page and get returned to really old forum index pages etc. I don't see this, but I've been busy with my day job <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
How can I judge if the UBB CACHE & PHP ACCELERATOR are really helping me out?
Here is what the site says after upgrading from 5.47d 8 days ago...earlier today it was only at 70%?
You have 3361 registered members. You have 15 forums. Page views this month (11/2001): 91530, 91016 (99.44%) from the UBB Accelerator
ALSO..one problem with storage may have to do with your site's stat & log files. After only a week on UBB 6.1.0.2 there was 400+MB of log files etc. I had them turn off stats & log file generation to save space..who needs website stats when you have that many hits.
As I said, we've used 5.45 until recently. We've had our top days back when we used it (2000 hits per day). And the board never got over the 100 mb limit. As far as I know, never even got to 50mb...
Same board, with about 500 more topics probably, jumped to 120-130 mb! Cache made a habit to take up to 20 mb of space and due to this all other DB based scripts we have (Quick Polls, for example) crashed instantly...
So UBB has become way to expensive to run for us. A small website, non-comercial, cannot afford it anymore.
I find it unlikely that the UBB is directly responsible for that jump in disk space use. A fully cached UBB will take about 25-40% more disk space than a UBB5 (as there's more HTML and more stuff being written to disk)... but a full cache on a board that is frequently posted to will never, ever occur.
Let's do a little investigation. Is this a Unix server? If so, do you have shell access? And if so, do you feel comfortable using the shell?
-- Charles Capps Programmer, Infopop Corporation Please do not contact me privately for support - post on the board or open a support ticket instead!
I agree Charles... I have witnessed NOTHING of what Shanga is reporting - I believe he has a software conflict with something else he is running.
As far as I can see I've saved disk space, bandwidth and load. Not a peep from my ISP...
EDIT: To give you some quick numbers - I've been running 6.1.0.2 now for 5 days now... my ENTIRE site STILL sits confortably at 162 Mb... down about 35 Mb from BEFORE my install.
almost 57% of the pages are being viewed through the accelerator... and I've had no issues at all.
Shanga: Please understand I am not trying to annoy you or bug you - but I MUST post the success that I am currently enjoying with the new format/caching because I NEVER want to see it removed! Before I has to regularly prune my forums, now I have plenty of space to let them grow even larger! I've even had comments on how fast the site runs now! Work with Charles and see if you can't identify what on your server is set wrong - because this feature is one of the best ever added to the UBB!
[This message was edited by Bomberman on 08 Nov 01 at 07:46 AM.]
From my calculations, I will go from 20GB b/w a month to about 3.5 GB b/w and the space required will be 50% due to removing the html files, using CACHE & PHP accel.
And No I don't work for InfoPop, nor am I receiving anything for my statements from them.
Originally posted by Boss Hoss: You have 3378 registered members. You have 15 forums. Page views this month (11/2001): 150851, 147900 (98.04%) from the UBB Accelerator
I'm curious how much space YOUR /ubb directory takes. Especially Forum9, Observation Lounge.
I had the most unfortunate mishap on Oct 21 where my server crashed, outsourced. I was planning to do the UBB upgrade anyway that was released on 10/19..but I had a lot of trouble getting everything reinstalled as was..so I upgraded the UBB without my 5.47UBB content to 6.1UBB and got the rest of my site working - i thought the old files had been lost for good.
I have received the backup UBB site files from my provider and will be reinstalling 6 months worth of cgi content files this weekend. I was running 400MB+ for 6 months of content, and was pruning some valuable content monthly. Considering that there is a 1:1+ ratio between the cgi & html files of 5.47 I expect to be under 200MB when I've reloaded them and don't have the html files to worry with, or the forumdisplayindex files that grew to 10 MB each.
Now the one problem I did have was with the log files created..you know for stats and errors and such..they did take up 400MB after only a week!!!! Once I had this disabled on my account I am back down to a cool 130MB before reloading old files (see above). I BET if you have log file creation turned on this could be what is loading up the site.
IMO website statistics are misleading..all I need to know is I have more hits than I care to count anymore. The only information I really need is how many pageviews the BB gives for advertising..and then I really need how many times the ad was exposed which is documented by the WebAdvert scripts I use.
Hay I do hosting as a reseller and I couldn't even host my own site with 5.47, now there is hope but I have enough clients to goto a dedicated server shortly. If you need a better host, check out www.tera-byte.com especially their virtual server plan at $69/month..50GB b/w & 2GB storage.
Well they have been great and the tech support is the best..personally answered by their hoss many times. Experiencing a little waves right now as they transfer my site into the shared hosting server...as it was only one on another server until the HD crashed.
Their virtual server account would not be appropriate for a forum size like mine or greater. I use their virtual server for all my hosting accounts. In 6 months or so I'll be ready to combine them all onto one dedicated server...and they use ensim.com hosting software, life is easy!
The only host where I haven't been charged for b/w excesses..hoping 6.1 will take me off their radar map.
From what you've said and what I've tested, UBB 6.1.0.2 seems better than 6.0.5
Sadly, it hasn't got yet all the functionalities our users need. So we cannot upgrade to that yet. Besides, upgrading to the latest version immediately isn't advisable for anything or anyone.
After almost two years of running UBB, I think we've come to a crossroad. In the coming weeks we'll do extensive offline testing for both latest UBB and Ikb3. We'll test the boards for speed (on the same server), size, reliability, ease of customization, admin options including backup, user options and facilities.
Which board will score higher will stay with us. If we drop UBB we'll probably go through a painfull conversion process. But that's nothing I'm not used to:
jan 2000 - interinc.com/ (ICU Global): our very small ubb crashed due to processor overload. october 2001 - addr.com/ our ubb 5.46 crashed again, after reaching 1000 members. november 2001 - addr.com/ our ubb 6.05 didn't crash, but left the other scripts without space (crashed their dbases).
We've bought 200mb of space now, so the board has the space it needs. But we'll soon give a hand to some friends and host their board too, so the next upgrade of our forum must bring the size down or else...
After reading your input I double checked the forum folders. Seems like some very old forums had redundant html files in them, which in turn were cached and messed everything up. I still feel uneasy about that dynamically alocated cache, but at least now has space to grow without crashing. Now we can at least wait in peace for the UBB upgrades and judge if we keep going this way.
I'd like to thank everyone for assistance, excuse myself for the harsh words and close this discussion.
Btw: a backup routine would be nice for the future...
There you go! We might make a horse trainer out of you yet..just a little more patience with the beast and you'll have it made <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />
When I installed 6.1.0.2 it told me what "old" files to delete which are the html files and forumindex file for the most part. You must have missed that when you upgraded to 6.0?
Technically 6.1.0.2 IS the second release of the version...and having come up from 5.47d I feel fine with it. The only issue i've been told is using the BACK key will ocassionally bring up and older cahced copy of the index listings..I tell them always to navigate forwards..like riding their horse.
That's excellent news Shanga! I've found 6.1.0.2 to run quite well... as has my Hosting company. I was one of their bigger hogs when it came to CPU and B/W (was even CPU limited for awhile) - but I've fallen way down now. Hopefully you'll experience the same... <img src="https://www.ubbcentral.com/boards/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />
Originally posted by Boss Hoss: When I installed 6.1.0.2 it told me what "old" files to delete which are the html files and forumindex file for the most part. You must have missed that when you upgraded to 6.0?
uhm, I must've missed that advisory somehow. While I don't see any .html files in the folders (apart from the index.html file in each folder.
However, I did notice that some forums have the .annc files in them, while others don't. Should I delete these files too? And does anyone have a list of those files which need to be deleted?
After upgrading from version 5 to 6, the <HTML> files are no longer needed..not sure how 6.0 was layed out but I think these files should have been deleted then as well...
Cleaning up: You can delete the following files immediately after you confirm that your new board is running correctly: •noncgi/*.html (except index.html) •noncgi/Forum*/ANNC/ •noncgi/Forum*/forum*.threads (but not forum_*.threads) •noncgi/Forum*/private-*/ANNC/ •noncgi/Forum*/private-*/forum*.threads •noncgi/forumindex*.cgi •noncgi/dailyindex-*.file •noncgi/Archives/* •noncgi/ubbdiagnostic.file •members/pindex/ •members/OldMembers/
But don't ask me, I'm just a horse trainer, ask the wranglers at InfoPop to be certain. I just play a computer geek on TV.
After upgrading from version 5 to 6, the <HTML> files are no longer needed..not sure how 6.0 was layed out but I think these files should have been deleted then as well...
Cleaning up: You can delete the following files immediately after you confirm that your new board is running correctly: •noncgi/*.html (except index.html) •noncgi/Forum*/ANNC/ •noncgi/Forum*/forum*.threads (but not forum_*.threads) •noncgi/Forum*/private-*/ANNC/ •noncgi/Forum*/private-*/forum*.threads •noncgi/forumindex*.cgi <<<-----memory savings! •noncgi/dailyindex-*.file •noncgi/Archives/* •noncgi/ubbdiagnostic.file •members/pindex/ •members/OldMembers/ •cgi-bin/UltBB.setup •cgi-bin/mods.file •cgi-bin/forums.cgi •cgi-bin/Styles.file •noncgi/Forum*/HTML/ <<<-----memory savings! •noncgi/Forum*/private-*/HTML
But don't ask me, I'm just a horse trainer, ask the wranglers at InfoPop to be certain. I just play a computer geek on TV.
Thanks Boss. I did do that clean up, so there are no such files. My query was about the *.annc files which seem to be in some forum folders but not others. I s'ppose those can remain?
