CPU Quota

[mith]

The CPU error has more to do with lots of different things happening than with one action.

We get that error if our account uses a large percentage of CPU time (it used to say 20%, but I think it's more like 15%); probably partly to combat denial-of-service attacks, and partly to keep one site from slowing down all the other accounts on the server. It lasts for about 10-15 seconds.

I recently received an email saying they now have servers specifically for those of us who get this error frequently, but it's a significant jump in cost. Something to consider in the future, though.

[mith]

Exactly.

[mith]

I hope so too... guess we should stop messing with the wiki for a day and see if that's what's causing it.

Looking at the logs, it looks more likely that it's something else. We're getting a big list of slowness for about 5 minutes at a time, with gaps in between (unfortunately, the gaps aren't very big). I'll look into it.

[mith]

Nearly everything in the logs is forum page loads (with the odd slow mysql query thrown in for good measure). I guess it's possible one of the edits messed something up on the server, but like I said, it's more likely something else.

[mith]

Looks like there was about a six hour gap, then another five minutes of log, and it's been quiet since then.

jeep, have you made any code changes in the past day or two?

[mith]

That makes sense. The last log is from around 9 (I believe the server is on the west coast). We'll see how it looks today. If nothing comes up, I'm inclined to believe it's just a temporary server hiccup - some of the queries that were taking large chunks of CPU time simply shouldn't have been. Probably worth looking into making some things more efficient anyway.

[mith]

An update on this:

We only had the one CPU exceeded incident yesterday. As I discussed with jeep, the main culprit in that appears to have been a mysql call on the search table. Given that the query is very routine and never ever takes as long as it did that time, I still think it's most likely this is some temporary server issue. We may do some archiving just in case, though.

[mith]

Argh. It was doing relatively well the past few days, too.

Looking at the logs, it seems we've had one CPU Quota error most days, caused primarily by one extremely slow MySQL query. Yesterday, that query was a search one - I could understand those being slow (but on the other hand, they're obviously not

that

slow

all

the time, or we'd have CPU Quota errors constantly... and that totally sounds like WIFOM, doesn't it ).

Today, we've already had three, and none of them were caused by just one MySQL query, but several not-quite-so-slow-but-still-slow ones, and most of these queries are just routine forum stuff (loading a page and what not).

bluehost will not be getting a valentine today. I'll yell at them some more when I get a chance.

[mith]

I'll look into it (again) when I have some time. I've been sick all week, and now I'm behind on work.

[mith]

We were down for a few minutes. I was told admins were investigating performance on the server. I suspect this is a Lepton's Gambit.

[mith]

sv, you got a CPU Quota Exceeded error yesterday? Because there's not anything in the logs for yesterday.

[mith]

Weird.

Anyone else gotten a CPU error recently? Nothing in the logs since Saturday.

[mith]

That's the database server (or the site server) being down temporarily. Nothing to do with the CPU. Usually means they're working on something.

[mith]

Huh. We've had one each of the past three nights, and the logs are... well, it's different than before, I'll leave it at that until I talk to jeep.