85 replies to this topic

[Grail]

Brilliant! Much faster Jay, good work. [thumb]

[AdamDavis]

Thank you Jay. Well done.

[rahein]

Much faster. Used to take 10 seconds for the whole main page to load now under 1.

[jaydfox]

Alright, I'm going to upgrade MySQL tonight. Expect more downtime. Hopefully this'll fix the problem going forward, however.

[jaydfox]

Okay, upgrade will commence immediately. I give this a 50/50 chance of working. If it doesn't work, I give it a 50/50 chance that I'll have to reload the database from the backup.

If I have to reload from the backup, I give a 50/50 chance that that'll work...

Hmm, what the hell am I doing?

[jaydfox]

Hmm, the server really shouldn't be operational right now. I've been racking my brain trying to fix a problem, and then I log in to make sure the site's still down, and it's UP! Ahhh!

[jaydfox]

The site's kinda broken. Don't post anything in the next day or two without saving a copy to your hard drive, in case I have to restore the database from a backup I took several hours ago.

[jaydfox]

I.... am... SO FUCKING PISSED OFF RIGHT NOW!!!! [angry]

Do you want to know why the forum crashed when I upgraded mysql to version 4.1? Do you? DO YOU!!!???

Well, apparently, in version 4.1 of mysql, you can't use "mod" as an alias for a table. SAY WHAT?!?!?!? [8)]

Yeah, apparently, it's like, reserved or something.... One stupid little query, that gets loaded on every forum page, checks for moderator privileges, and it does this by aliasing the ibf_moderators table to "mod". And that's why we were seeing that pesky message that said there was a problem with the syntax...

Actually, I wouldn't have figured it out at all, if it weren't such a FUCKING NIGHTMARE to reinstall mysql 4.0. You see, I upgraded to 4.1, and everything seemed fine, on the surface. The wiki pages worked, after a couple quick recompiles of Apache. I'd done this before, so I barely broke a sweat.

But for whatever reason, the forum was messed up. I kept getting mysql errors... No big deal, thought I! I was smart; I planned ahead; I made a backup of the database! So, I proceeded to downgrade to version 4.0, just like I'd read about...

But when all was said and done, I couldn't start mysqld. Apparently, the host.MYI and other critical files got corrupted. Hey, no big deal, I'll just reinstall from scratch, right?

WRONG! Apparently, you can't just reinstall. You see, when you reinstall through WHM, it's actually "upgrading", and it relies on the fact that the user privilege tables already exist and are in the proper format. No, you can't just have it create new privilege tables from scratch. I tried. Many, many, many times. And you'd think that if you googled for these files, you'd find a stock set of them, fresh and ready to roll... I tried. Maybe I'm just inept with Google, but all I could find were pages that discussed host.MYI. I didn't want to discuss it, I wanted a working copy!

It's funny, because you'd think a fresh install would know that, by definition, THERE AREN'T ANY PRIVILEGE TABLES!!! But no, it checks the existing privilege tables, and then gives up. I was able to run mysqld in "safe" mode by bypassing the privilege tables. By bypassing the f*cked up tables, no errors were encountered.

EXCEPT, then anyone could get into the database as though they were an admin, and peruse the whole database. Not good...

I even went to mysql's website and got instructions for downloading the RPMs and installing them manually (that's right, I said screw cPanel's /scripts/mysqlup). But when I tried to run the rpm -i ..., I just got an error saying that perl(DBI) wasn't installed.

Yes it is!!! Damn you, Red Hat Package Manager!

For the curious, the error I was getting on the host.MYI file was:

File '/usr/share/mysql/charsets/?.conf' not found (Errcode: 2)

Go ahead, google it. You'll see lots of ways people suggest fixing it. I TRIED THEM ALL! Well, probably not all of them, but all on the first page of hits, including pages for the alternate error message:

/usr/sbin/mysqld: Can't open file: 'host.MYI'. (errno: 142)

I finally decided, well, let's try upgrading back to 4.1, then maybe I can back up the host.MYI file and then downgrade again. I had no clue what good this was going to do, but I tried it anyway, because the site had been down for like 5-6 hours.

And then... And then I noticed something. I noticed that on the front page, the online list on the right wasn't wigging out. Hmm, maybe it's accessing the database in a different way, thought I...

So I checked it out. Looked pretty standard to me:

// MySQL Connection Information
$db_server = "localhost";  // The name of your server
$db_username = "secret_username"; // The MySQL username
$db_password = "secret_password"; // The MySQL password
$db_name = "secret_database";  // The name of the database where your forums are installed


$linkforums = "http://www.imminst.org/forum/"; // URL to forums

// Tables
$ibf_sessions = "ibf_sessions"; // Change if not correct
$ibf_groups = "ibf_groups";

///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

mysql_connect("$db_server","$db_username","$db_password");
mysql_select_db("$db_name");

$time = time() - 900;
$data = mysql_query("SELECT a bunch of stuff FROM a table WHERE something is true ORDER BY a column DESC");

// cache all printed members so we don't double print them
$cached = array();
while ($result = mysql_fetch_array($data) )

Hmm, I wonder why this is working, and the forum index isn't... It took quite a bit of digging, and few debug messages inserted into the code... And I noticed that the first query that was being run actually worked! It was the second query that was bombing out.

So I copied the text of the query and started running it manually in mysql from a shell. Sure enough, I got the same error message. I removed all but one column name from each table, just to make sure that it wasn't the length of the query. Nope.

I tried removing the ibf_moderators table, and the query worked... Hmm... I tried removing the ibf_groups table instead, and it was broken again. The left joins were basically indentical in structure, so there was something about that mod table. Just for the hell of it, I decided to see what would happen if I renamed the "mod" alias. And sure enough, I got a result set back.

So, I changed the appropriate php source file, and voila, the forum was back in action.

All that hell, because someone decided to use an alias that had "I'll be a reserved word in a future version" written all over it.

Anyway, the forum's up and running, on the all new and improved mysql 4.1. Yay... [mellow]

[jaydfox]

Oh, by the way, sorry about the downtime...

[Bruce Klein]

Wow, Jay... you're coming close to knowing every angle.

[rahein]

I hate when DBs add new reserved words. At my work a DB that I inherited had a TYPE field in probably 20 tables that I had to jump to hoops to fix.

[Grail]

Awesome work Jay, I would've probably thrown the whole thing out the window (being the rational man that I am). I think I speak for all of us when I say "Thanks!"

[Live Forever]

Jay I am glad it is you and not me. I would have broken something around the house if I had gotten as frustrated as it sounds like you got. Thanks for your hard work.

[JMorgan]

I just clicked on the Canaca ad in this thread and got the following error message:

Error executing query in file /home/canaca/public_html/affiliate/link.php on line 94

Don't know if this is an Imminst problem or a Canaca problem.

[jaydfox]

Thanks for the heads up, Joel. I'll look into it.

[jaydfox]

Bruce set up the affiliate links, to the best of my knowledge, so I'll ask him. The link is definitely on Canaca's server, so it's unlikely to be a problem on our side. But we'll get it figured out one way or another...

[Bruce Klein]

Seems Canaca's link has changed during the interim. Thanks.

[jaydfox]

BTW, if you notice anything broken with the site, please feel free to send an email to webmaster AT_SYMBOL imminst DOT_OR_PERIOD org. (I know, like a spam bot couldn't just guess that email address...)

There are still little quirks being worked out here and there, mostly related to the move.

[jaydfox]

The forum went down on the morning of May 24 for several hours, maybe 7-8 or so. Then I took the forum down that night as I tried to upgrade the database, and the site was down from about 9 PM to 3 AM, with intermittent forum activity. When I took the forum down, the website didn't stop working, so traffic was still being recorded. I don't know about when it went down that morning, though from descriptions of what happened, I'm guessing the site was still up.

Well, here's how the web stats were affected.

As you can see, the stats dropped significantly on the 24th, which is to be expected, since the forum was down about 11-12 hours. What's interesting, however, is that there's been no downtime (to my knowledge) since then, yet the stats haven't really recovered. We seem to have lost some traffic there, possibly due to frustration. People just gave up and haven't been back since.

Or am I reading too much in to this?

BTW, the reason I even checked the stats is because the site has been very active today, at least in terms of number of posts and active topics. Even the member counts have been high, usually around 180 guests/members per hour, compared to 150/hour a few days ago. Also, the number of registered members online today is already up to 146, compared to the mid 130's last week.

Edit: 11:51 PM, and now we're up to 150 registered members today!

Attached Files

•  May_Web_Stats.gif   11.38KB   0 downloads

Edited by jaydfox, 01 June 2006 - 03:52 AM.

[jaydfox]

Oh, and if it wasn't obvious, the stats don't start until about the 15th because that's when the site moved (well, late the night of the 14th).

[FunkOdyssey]

As you can see, the stats dropped significantly on the 24th, which is to be expected, since the forum was down about 11-12 hours. What's interesting, however, is that there's been no downtime (to my knowledge) since then, yet the stats haven't really recovered. We seem to have lost some traffic there, possibly due to frustration. People just gave up and haven't been back since.

Or am I reading too much in to this?

I think you might be paying too close attention to it. Like a 401k plan, checking the value daily can only lead to trouble and rash decisions. Better to look at longer-term trends in my opinion (like month-to-month)

[Kalepha]

I think Live Forever has just been slacking, coincidentally since the 24th.

[Live Forever]

Yea, I wouldn't put too much stock into day to day fluctuations. Although, the lesurvey and related stuff (Myspace messages) might have had something to do with the surge today? Probably not.

[jaydfox]

Our top 20 referrers so far (culling internal links, i.e., links from pages on imminst.org):

http://www.google.com/search 
http://72.14.203.104/search 
http://72.14.207.104/search 
http://64.233.161.104/search 
http://66.102.7.104/search 

http://search.yahoo.com/search 
http://www.google.ca/search 
http://72.14.209.104/search 
http://www.google.co.uk/search 
http://66.249.93.104/search 

http://64.233.183.104/search 
http://66.249.93.104/translate_c 
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/newsframe.html 
http://216.239.51.104/search 
http://216.239.59.104/search 

http://64.233.167.104/search 
http://www.google.com.au/search 
http://64.233.179.104/translate_c 
http://66.102.9.104/search 
http://www.google.de/search

Mostly search engines. Further down the list, I found the following non-search pages (excluding unrelated spam sites like [nukedlink]http://consolidation-debt-interest-loan-lo...te.ygboih.info[/nukedlink])

http://physical-immortality.1hwy.com/ 
http://www.transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/index/
http://www.cryoletter.org/
http://www.mprize.org/index.php
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm
http://www.betterhumans.com/blogs/videosurfer/archive/2006/05/27/7716.aspx
http://www.eternalmind.ru/content/view/390/2/
http://www.incipientposthuman.com/
http://cureaging.org/
http://nootropics.ipbhost.com/index.php
http://www.mindandmuscle.net/forum/index.php
http://www.huge-entity.com/forum/comments.php
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php
http://www.medscitalk.com/ftopic27069-180.html
http://alzheimer-facility.blogspot.com
http://www.longevitymeme.org/links/viewlinkgroup.cfm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryonics
http://www.methuselahmouse.org/index.php
http://www.stargate-sg1.nl/gateforum/viewtopic.php
http://www.cureaging.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality_Institute
http://transhumanism.org/index.php/th/
http://www.benbest.com/misc/access.html
http://www.joot.com/dave/writings/articles/entanglement/applications.shtml
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism
http://mboard.scifi.com/showflat.php
http://www.network54.com/Forum/291677/ 
http://home.mchsi.com/~deering9/sag.html
http://acceleratingfuture.com/newsframe.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immortality
http://www.acceleratingfuture.com/michael/blog/
http://transhumanism.org/index.php/WTA/about/
http://extrobritannia.blogspot.com/

[jaydfox]

Top search terms for the second half of May:

immortality 
imminst 
immortality institute 
hho gas 
tebonin 
hho 
modalert 
radio 
denny klein 
sulbutiamine 
denny klein hho 
phenibut 
whey healthier 
average human lifespan 
pat robertson leg press 
average lifespan 
pei xuetao 
jessica alba 
nootropics 
hho energy

Interesting, considering recent topics that have been active.

[jaydfox]

"hho gas" and "pat robertson leg press" I understand, given recently active topics. But "radio"? "jessica alba"? Did I miss something?

[Live Forever]

"hho gas" and "pat robertson leg press" I understand, given recently active topics. But "radio"? "jessica alba"? Did I miss something?

haha, when I did a search for "Jessica Alba Imminst" on Google, it came up with Don's post regarding Jessica Alba:
http://www.imminst.o...t=0

[jaydfox]

LF, I did the same thing. It doesn't strike me as the kind of post that would drive visits, and at any rate, the search string was just "jessica alba", and on Google at least, we're probably way down the list, since we're not on the first 25 pages (currently, anyway).

So I'm wondering why this blip happened in the first place. It's not just that it was a search term that brought someone here: it beat out nootropics! If you search for nootropics, we're on the first page! If you search for "average lifespan", we're on the first page. But "jessica alba"? What search engine was that?

[Live Forever]

I don't know, but mentioning jessica alba's name so much in this thread will probably make this one start showing up at some point on the search engines.

[doug123]

"hho gas" and "pat robertson leg press" I understand, given recently active topics. But "radio"? "jessica alba"? Did I miss something?

How is that data generated as a search term for that coded report? Some of those terms are awefully...strange.... [glasses]