Forums Slow to load

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PuzzledGreatly
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Forums Slow to load

Post by PuzzledGreatly » 23 Jan 2021, 19:01

The last two days the forum has been really slow to open pages - 30 seconds plus. It used to be a couple of seconds. I did notice the issue didn't seem to occure when visitng the old forum pages, just the current one.

gregster
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by gregster » 23 Jan 2021, 19:32

I also saw some loading problems - sometimes even with Cloudflare error messages (was it 502 ? it was 522 - they hinted to a problem with the host autohotkey.com), but for me it only started recently, in the last few hours. But at the moment, it loads fast again. No, it's on and off, it seems.

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joedf
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by joedf » 24 Jan 2021, 11:19

if it starts loading slowly again for anyone, if possible could you do Ctrl + Shift + i and select the Network tab. then do a hard refresh with Ctrl + Shift + r. Finally, look at what resource/file loading is lagging? for ex. a small file 3kb is taking 1s+ ?
My current suspicions would be CSS files, since that's only recent change I know of.
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gregster
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by gregster » 24 Jan 2021, 20:23

The problem just came back for me. Sometimes it loads fast, but too often it times out at 30+ seconds and I'll land on a Cloudflare 522 page.

But if this topic page here actually loads slowly (10-20 seconds) - your avatars (joedf's and PuzzledGreatly's) are timing out:
Repeatedly, they get a 522 status and don't get displayed. although they only have 6 kb each, they seem to time out after 15 to 16 seconds according to the network tab, while everything else loads under 100 milliseconds.

network.jpg
network.jpg (50.66 KiB) Viewed 2421 times

That said, pages without avatars also time out or are very slow 🤷‍♂️, perhaps a tad less often - but I am not sure.

When these pages are slow, I couldn't identify any particularly slow items in the network tab.
Just now, a page of the moderator logs (without avatars obviously) took 17 and 18 seconds to load, but the slowest items took only 120ms (and only 51ms the second time). So, there is nothing obvious... perhaps the avatar timeouts are just a side-effect of some other problem :?:

I could reproduce this - with similar values - a lot of times.

Then, next time, a few seconds or minutes later, the same page loads fast again (a few 100 ms).

Edit: and suddenly, it seems to be fixed again.
Last edited by gregster on 24 Jan 2021, 20:50, edited 2 times in total.
Reason: Edit

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joedf
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by joedf » 25 Jan 2021, 09:25

Thanks @gregster , this a great place to start. I'll look in the panels for any spikes and will look more in detail hopefully later tonight.
It hit me on mobile too last night, a long ~30s lag for the main forum page... :think:
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by joedf » 25 Jan 2021, 10:10

So it seems like we have a big CPU lag spike last night between 6pm and 9pm EST. hitting around 50% usage, whereas baseline tends to be at around 13%.
A relatively large DB bandwidth spike between 9 and 10pm.

Looks like we had some mad mail requests to m [dot] huck [at] cthuck [dot] de, it was new unactivated account with no posts. I've decided it's lowrisk to banhammer it now. :think:

But yes it seems avatar images are lagging...

Edit: another cpu/ disk I/O spike happening now 10am - ... :think:
I've notified tank.
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just me
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by just me » 25 Jan 2021, 11:34

joedf wrote:But yes it seems avatar images are lagging...
It's a good reason to eliminate this kiddish trash. ;)

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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by joedf » 25 Jan 2021, 11:42

Perhaps , but it's merely a symptom of the problem, not the source of it :?
Anyhow, I've done a reboot, cleared the cloudflare cache, and enable Under Attack Mode. Things seem to be okay for now.
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gregster
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by gregster » 25 Jan 2021, 14:40

joedf, thank you for looking into it!

just me wrote:
25 Jan 2021, 11:34
joedf wrote:But yes it seems avatar images are lagging...
It's a good reason to eliminate this kiddish trash. ;)
That seems a bit harsh! At least, it can be a good visual cue when quickly scanning a long topic.

That said, I can still enjoy some "trash". We have people here from all ages, with different experiences and preferences - you, joedf and me are good examples (all three from different "generations", with me in the middle). Having some avatars or emoticons or whatever surely doesn't take anything away from our common goal of advancing and supporting the AutoHotkey language. ;)

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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by BoBo » 25 Jan 2021, 15:47

Having some avatars or emoticons or whatever surely doesn't take anything away from our common goal of advancing and supporting the AutoHotkey language. ;)
Erm, are you think so? :thinking: Joe Gline’s latest marketing campaign is promoting AHK using the good ol’ fashioned "sex sells" approach. Make up your mind: https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/autohotkey

gregster
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by gregster » 25 Jan 2021, 16:21

You mean the use of a picture of Salma Hayek in one of his videos? The depiction of a dressed woman (however it could be considered sexually evocative) is already out of bounds ?
Anyway, I don't see the connection to forum avatars and emoticons, which I talked about - and it's in his own youtube video. I wouldn't consider it ideal, but we don't have much influence on that.
I've only quickly skimmed the video, though, but afaics it wouldn't warrant a link removal from the forums. If you have a different impression, perhaps point out what you mean specifically (per personal message, if appropriate).

But that's all offtopic here - and if needed, should be continued in a separate topic. Or you should talk to Joe Glines directly, if you have specific concerns.

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PuzzledGreatly
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by PuzzledGreatly » 25 Jan 2021, 16:55

Just visited to look at this topic and I saw a page claiming to be from cloudflare. I should have grabbed a screenshot. Ominously, it seemed to indicate that it would always appear before allowing me to see any pages. I had to wait the best part of twenty seconds before I could get to the list of forums. I was just about to give up. Whenever I have problems visiting sites it always seems to be related to cloudflare. What's the reason for using it and is there an alternative?

gregster
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by gregster » 25 Jan 2021, 17:04

It was certainly a cloudflare page, I have seen it, too, but only sporadically. cloudflare helps - amoung other things - to keep websites safe from DDoS and other attacks. Like joedf mentioned above, he saw some unusual activities and therefore upped cloudflare's settings which might - for the moment - lead to certain waiting times, but will hopefully help to keep the forums from crashing under an attack from outside.

cloudflare is broadly used on the internet, and helps to keep many websites operational - and although there are a few smaller alternatives, it doesn't change the fact that we'll have to have some serious protection against attackers - and that this will sometimes inconvenience the forum users a bit.

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joedf
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by joedf » 25 Jan 2021, 18:04

Yes, there is cloudflare waiting page. Sorry about the inconvenience.
This is from the "Under Attack Mode", I've set this on for now. tank will be looking into it later. I haven't really figured out whats going on yet.

Looks like we might be impacted by this: https://status.digitalocean.com/incidents/klwg8kjjr8hg
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SOTE
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by SOTE » 25 Jan 2021, 18:21

Are you guys sure the previous slowness and loading problems have nothing to do with Cloudflare?

Because right now, I guess because of the "Under Attack Mode" getting the AutoHotkey website is really troublesome. Cloudflare is demanding cookies and JavaScript, while taking these long periods of time to analyze. Then comes the barrage of Captcha, sometimes over and over. After going through all that, the AutoHotkey website is still loading pages slowly. Wondering if there was something going on with Cloudflare in the first place.
PuzzledGreatly wrote:
25 Jan 2021, 16:55
Whenever I have problems visiting sites it always seems to be related to cloudflare.
I've noticed that too.
Last edited by SOTE on 25 Jan 2021, 18:27, edited 1 time in total.

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Scr1pter
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by Scr1pter » 25 Jan 2021, 18:26

Yes, it is very slow for me as well.

Cheers!
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gregster
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by gregster » 25 Jan 2021, 18:31

For me, it working better now. I don't get timeouts anymore, although the forum is certainly not very fast. But I can work with it.

On the other hand, cloudflare is definitely differentiating between IPs and other factors. So, people might be affected by it in different amounts.

I am probably lucky, I haven't had to solve a captcha once and I only see the waiting page after some inactivity. But skipping cloudflare wouldn't be a good idea, imho. If they have a temporary problem, what should we do? Expose us completely? During a supposed attack?

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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by gregster » 25 Jan 2021, 18:33

SOTE wrote:
25 Jan 2021, 18:21
PuzzledGreatly wrote:
25 Jan 2021, 16:55
Whenever I have problems visiting sites it always seems to be related to cloudflare.
I've noticed that too.
It could also mean that cloudflare is actually working and that otherwise the server/website might have crashed already without it, under an attack.

It's not that cloudflare is perfect, but the alternatives don't look very attractive. Especially, as long as the actual problem is not reliably identified yet.

SOTE
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by SOTE » 25 Jan 2021, 18:40

gregster wrote:
25 Jan 2021, 18:33
SOTE wrote:
25 Jan 2021, 18:21
PuzzledGreatly wrote:
25 Jan 2021, 16:55
Whenever I have problems visiting sites it always seems to be related to cloudflare.
I've noticed that too.
It could also mean that cloudflare is working and that otherwise the server/website might have crashed already without it.
Maybe. But also seeing 522 errors, "...indicates that Cloudflare is unable to reach the origin web server and the request times out..." When webservers are behind Cloudflare, these connection errors seem more likely.

However, understand that you guys are in a plus versus minus situation and are trying to troubleshoot what's going on.

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joedf
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Re: Forums Slow to load

Post by joedf » 25 Jan 2021, 19:11

We are suspiciously getting a lot of requests from Tor... :think:
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