Site availability: an explanation

[System]

If you ever noticed that Amiga.org is unavailable for a few moments each day, here's a quick explanation.

Amiga.org's server, in order to handle the advanced load placed on it by the software, runs a PHP Caching utility called APC Cache.  While this system is fabulous and makes the site much much faster than it normally would be, we have found a problem in that it leaks "semaphores" or more to the point, memory.

As a result, we have decided to begin rebooting the server twice per day to free up the memory lost by the program.  While this might cause a moment or two of confusion, we believe it will be best overall to be able to keep everything running at it's optimum efficiency.

We currently have the site running 384mb of memory, which is it's maximum before we have to buy a new motherboard.  We have also alerted the makers of APC Cache to this situation and hope they will have a fix soon.

Wayne Hunt
Amiga.org

[Erwin-K]

Thanks for the heads up, Wayne.

Don't think I've run into that issue myself, but better Fire Prevention, than Fire Fighting. BTW, are there  common times for this? If so, could you post them?

Remember(USA reference) Smokey The Bear says, "Only you can prevent Users Burning."

                  Best,

                      Bob Kennedy

[redrumloa]

I've noticed this outage, I didn't say anything because it is so brief i figured there was a simple answer. Thanks for the info.

[System]

Ahh that's why. Thanks for the heads up

[Housey]

Fairplay  :-)

[Chathurawind]

Looks like Wayne doesn't take criticism to well.

[System]

I take criticism very well.  I do not take profanity tossed about very well.  I also do not take pointless anonymous dweeb criticism.  

If it's not important enough for you to log in, it's not important enough for me to bother with.

Wayne Hunt
Amiga.org

[redrumloa]

Damn right Wayne. Those types of posts just reinforce my opinion that anonymous posting should be disabled. They add no value.

[System]

Erm, the APC docs mention this problem. Have you tried running it in MMAP mode instead of SHM?

Anyway, leaked semaphores should be no problem on this machine - I had APC caching my custom-built PHP-based intranet handling several requests per second for 8 hours a day, running on a 486/33 with 32MB RAM under Linux (with a MySQL backend, I might add) - and it stayed up for weeks, if not months at a time without a complaint!

[System]

Yeah, but did you have an average of 30 people online at the same time running almost 40 different services?

[System]

There were upto 150 concurrent users and the same box provided the MySQL backend for an additional webserver...