UBB.threads PHP Forum Software Community Forums UBB.threads Version 7/8 Support 90% Server load with Shout Box

Hi all,

Since the installation of V7.02, the server load increased from 30% to 90%. My ISP is not happy with that, neither users who' are experience slow performance. My provider figured out that this is caused by the Shout Box. People like to use it (fun&easy), so I would like to keep it.
Any suggestions? Can I change anything in the configuration?
http://www.femistyle.be/ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php

I have heard of people mentioning it as a load issue but havn't actually seen any proof of that, nor have i seen anything to fix issues short of disabling it.

If you like the chat, you could try using something like my IRC Chat addon and using an IRC server for your users "fun and easy" chatting, it's free and shouldn't cause any load issues...

You have a URL where I can find that one?

Yessum, Clicky Clicky

It's fairly easy to configure; and by default uses the IRC server I operate; if you need any help in setting up a channel somewhere, let me know.

Neither should the Shout Box - I think Rick needs to see if he can track it down on some one's system that is reporting it.

As UBBT gets bigger and more add-ons it might start to surface as an issue for others that currently don't have this issue.

I wonder if there is some common application running on the Host that is the culprit as to why some see it and some don't see it.

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nt, i've heard of the same issues from several users; when they turn off the shoutbox all returns to normal...

I'm not disagreeing with that I'm only saying that it would be nice if Rick or someone else with the knowledge could actually track down the REAL cause so that perhaps it could be fixed for everyone.

I don't see this issue on my site but I run on a Windows Host not Linux. My other account hopefully I'll have running within a couple weeks and it will be on Linux but hopefully I won't have the issue on my Linux one either.

There have to be many UBBT 7.x sites out there and so far I've only seen a few post that they have this issue so it's not like some bugs that affect ALL users. This one is odd in the sense that only a few see the issue for some reason which leads me to believe that there is some configuration or software running on their system that is at least contributory to the issue.

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Mainly this would probably depend on how many people are online and just sit on a certain page or post to the shoutbox. The shoutbox does a check for new content every 30 seconds, and it's a very small check in that it just checks to see if there is anything new in the SHOUT_BOX table.

Where this could get out of hand would be if you have a very large number of people using it at once. But even then it's not a very large resource hog as the queries are much smaller than if those users were actually browsing/making posts.

I hear you Rick, but something is causing extreme resource usage for some and not for others. When your host provider tells you to knock it off or he will shut down your board then that's a problem that needs fixing. Luckily shutting off the Shout Box appears to be a quick fix for them but then it also prevents them from using a nice add-on.

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Hey everyone,
I'm the tech-guy of the hosting-company which reported it to our customer, which put it on this forum.
Take a look at: http://statserver.ris.be/web3.php
There you see that there was a much bigger load from tuesday until friday-morning.
This is exact the time where the shoutbox was on, so I did some research.
It is a very busy site, and is responsible for about 25% off the traffic for that server. If it uses 25% of the servers traffic, it will use 25% of its load.
Normal operation: 30% overal-load during daytime, so 7.5% of the load is for this website, 22.5% of the other sites.
If shoutbox is on, the load-average is about 90%.
The other websites use still the same (7.5%), so with the shoutbox on this websites uses 82.5% of the servers load!

I like all the features, but fairly said: this isn't normal anymore.

So I digged a little bit deeper.
with the previous version, /ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php has 3500 hits per day.
With the new version /ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php has 150.000 hits per day!
This all with the same number of visitors and traffic.

Now if I look at the Apache Server Status, I see many childs with the POST-command to /ubbthreads/ubbthreads.php.
Each proces took apache between 1-2 MB of memory, and about 0.5-2% of CPU.
Mysql uses more: about 28 MB per child, with only 8 MB shared.
I saw in the logs that the file which was sent back wasn't big (between 99 and 2000 bytes).
But for every page you must:
- Fork a httpd-child
- open a database-connection
- read/write to the table
- close the database-connection


I don't know how the shoutbox is build, but I surely think using Apache/PHP/MySQL is _not_ a good idea for a chat!
It works great if you only have a few users, but yeah then nobody will chat.
If you got much users, the chat will be used, and the load will raise exponential.

That's why all the IRC are on special programs with a special build server/client.
Or for low usage you can use a Java-applications.

Oh yeah: I'm not the guy which blockes every new idea, but use the right ones please.
This is just like an example like I had 5 years back: A client sent a photo to me, but it was to large. So I told him: you can split the message in your outlook in separate messages of 1 MB.
The next day I received an tiff-image of more then 200 MB.
Email isn't build to transfer big files,
Webservers aren't build to chat.

The main reason you're seeing the increased hits for ubbthreads.php is this. In prior versions ubbthreads.php was just a script that was called to display the main forum list. In this version everything goes through ubbthreads.php. It's our core script that is used for everything. So, before when you're adding a post you'd see a call to addpost.php. Now, it still calls ubbthreads.php with a parameter of ubb=addpost. So, the increase in that area is normal.

It's true that if the shoutbox is used as a regular chatroom it can definitely eat up some CPU. It's not written to be a full fledged chat room, it only has a 30 second refresh, with no way to force it to refresh other than loading the page. But some people will try and use it that way. Perhaps we can put a word of advice when enabling it that it could cause higher loads if people are trying to use it as a normal chatroom.

For example, here. We have it enabled, but it's only used here and there, so it causes no issues.

I regularly have many posts to my shoutbox - yet have not seen any major issues as a direct result of its use.

Bear in mind on traffic, some of it may be down to bots crawling the new pages.

Perhaps the shoutbox could vanish for guests - this would prevent bots from crawling it.... (and would be a benefit for signing up) - in fact all boxes should be group based

LOL - don't be stealing my Enhanced Security requests thread idea

Hmmm... possible bearing ?



Opening / Closing connection if Shout Box is doing that can add to overall slowness.

You could promote my UBBDev mod for the pJIRC for "full fledged chatrooms" for those who need a large active chat...

Oh and NT, I woudln't ever recommend turning on pconnections, unelss you own the server anyway lol

and even then I would be wary...

exactly... You know, some script providers code in pconnections and don't allow non-persistant connections by default? I had to go into a client website once and recode some of their scripts so that they would drop the connection when users navigated away vs trying to hold them open :/

Wonder if one of these people with Shout Box problems have enabled it.

possibly.

I tried it with AND without, same result.

Thats only normal.
A persistent mysql-connection is only persistent for the child which opened it.
If you make another http-connection (like browsing to the next page), the chanches that you get the same connection are very slim.
If this happens the origal child will have a sleeping mysql-connection for about 1 hr (default mysql) which uses memory, and will make perfomance in the long time worse!

How many users are using the Shout Box at the same time?
I just enabled it again and UP, server load up to 90% again :-(
Maybe it's just to popular at my site.

If it's a proven cause of the spikes (which you've ultimately proven it is) and your users enjoy the option of having a chat for your forums, you could use one of the (soon to be 3) alternatives available.
1. My pJIRC addon at UBBDev, it's free all around, and uses an IRC Server as a backend.
2. The Raidersoft addon at UBBDev, the raidersoft system is not free, but the integration information is provided none the less.
3. FlashChat may be a viable option as well soon, I've talked with the author and as soon as he can get ahold of a *legal* copy of UBB.Threads he's stated he'll work on the integration (please note that providing your software to 3rd parties *is* a license violation)

http://forums.clubsi.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=online

I have a decent amount of users online I suppose...and they do like to use that shoutbox when I put it up.

I also have gizmo's IRC client installed; hwoever, my users tend to flock to the shoutbox still.

hehe if one was to disable the shoutbox you'd give them no choice ...

That's what I have done now.

That stinks. My SB gets used quite a bit, but so far no complaints from my host - nor have I noticed much effect on the shared server I'm on. I can't help but agree that there's something else going on, truthfully.....

Femistyle, how did you change the "shout box" permission (view) to "logged in" users only. I could not find it in the Control Panel.

This isn't possible at this stage - although it would be nice to have it group based.

I guess Femistyle used a "mod" on his/her site to accomplish this...I guess this is a feature request..

Theres a thread somewhere (here) that discusses making sidebars member only.

One had to login before he or she could join the conversations.

Anyway, I disabled it and everything is working smoothly again. So no Shout Box at my forum.

Possibly making the database utf8 will fix this as well?

A solution to decrease server load would be to put the shoutbox on its own page. Remove it from the sidebar. I guess most of the time the users don't use it, as they browse the forums. When they like to chat they can go to the shoutbox page and chat with other members.
Or make the shoutbox a popup window. The users who like to chat can leave it open.

In both cases performance is saved and the constant reloads are only produced by the users who really use the shoutbox.

a pop up/out box would be good

I do believe that the shoutbox definitely needs looked at in future revisions; a lot of people experience load, and a lot of people like it... BUT theres no way for individuals to disable it... so moving it to its own page would solve a lot of problems and be a good first step to making some adjustments on it .

doesn't that then turn your shoutbox into a chat, which it is neither designed to be nor capable of being?

Actually, Rick has stated that in a future version he's wanted to make some sort of chat system, which would expand off of the shoutbox; so this'd be speeding that along

Problem is - that is exactly what it is on several sites - a chatroom...

agreed, hence my post

I've always been a firm believer in "right tool for the job."

I'll also admit my bias right up front and tell you that I never liked the shoutbox because it can't very well be limited in use to what it's designed to be.

I hate the shoutbox; I'll be the first one to say that lol... I don't use it on any of my sites for one reason, it's just another place that users can abuse and would have to be heavily monitored... BUT my clients love it on their forums, and I can see how it can be good for some situations at the same time...

I also have a chatroom - but when I implemented it, my users said ' why should we use it - we already have a chatroom here?'

I have made the shoutbox in the left hand column with a direct link to disable the right hand column - these keeps everyone happy.

However I would prefer for people to use the chatroom - but they like the ability to chat and browse the forums at the same time.

Ever wondered why eve's chat is in a popup box? Now you know. So people can browse and chat at the same time.

I have heard, numerous times, "is there anyway we can add the chat to a popup window?" (referring to the shoutbox).

And actually, my irc chat page on my site has a "detach chat" link that does a popup with the chat script there lol

would it be possible to detach the shoutbox into a separate window/popup? even better, as an "always on top" window.

i've experimented with this, without success. the instructions for accessing the shoutbox externally indicate that certain styles have to be set, without being specific.

Any more thought about how to handle the Shout Box?

I'm running 7.2 and am fairly confident the shout box was causing a "stickiness" issue on my board. Pages would sometimes be slow to load, and it would stick for about 30 seconds and then go back to normal.

Today, I turned the shout box off and the stickiness issue went away.

I think it's a cool feature and would love to keep it integrated in my board.

In the meantime, I'll look at some of the alternatives Gizmo posted.

In an upcoming version we'll be switching all of our ajax over to YUI. This has the benefit of being tested on a variety of platforms and will pretty much standardize everything in this area. This should help alleviate these types of issues.

YUI,DEWY,LUI - How long before we see this type of implementation?

YUI will be in an upcoming build

As in 7.3, 7.4, 7.xxx? Just mean I know Rick is looking into it but curious what ballpark time range might it possibly be.

Unfortnately, I can only really comment on things publicly discussed here; YUI in general has been, specific versioning information hasn't.

I predict the 7.xxx version (well, except for the 7.0.x-7.2.1 builds), if we're guessing

ROFL - Good guess

Lol yes, if we're guessing, I speculate a version after 7.2! lol

My users are bummed I pulled the shout box.

One thing to remember is even with converting things to YUI, the shoutbox will always be a drain on the server if it's heavily used. It's pretty much why many hosts don't allow web based chat scripts, it's just a lot of traffic on the server. The YUI conversion should help with the hanging problems for some people, but as far as overall load on the server, I'm not sure how much that will change.

Agreed, a java solution is best for those webhosts; as java is run from the users machine and doesn't nessessarily rely on the web server to run anything

one easy change (not a fix) is to just edit ubbthreads.inc.php and add a check for is_logged_in, in order to load the shoutbox.

that rids you of the anonymous chat box load.

just add:
after the calendar check..