message board keeps 'locking'

Jac · Postby **Jac** » 14 Jan 2007, 2:04pm

When I move from home page to message board it has on several occasions just 'locked'.
Nothing will work - mouse has no effect and in the end I have to turn off the computer and start again.
Admin can you advise please
I dont think it is my computer as I have not experienced any problems elswhere.
Thanks :cry:

Fonant · Postby **Fonant** » 14 Jan 2007, 2:23pm

The message board is just a set of web pages, so they in themselves couldn't cause the computer to lock, unless they had some content that made your web browser unhappy enough to lock the computer. If that was the case then lots of people would have the same problem.

What web browser are you using?

Do use use any Internet Security sofware, in particular Norton Internet Security?

If it's Internet Explorer, I'd recommend that you delete all the temporary internet files (Tools > Internet Options > (Temporary Internet Files) > Delete Files...). IE6 in particular does very odd things if it runs out of disk space for these files, or if they get corrupted in any way.

If that doesn't help, can you find whether it's a particular forum page that causes the problem, or does it seem to happen randomly?

Does pressing Ctrl-Alt-Del work when the computer is locked? (assuming you're using a PC)

Jac · Postby **Jac** » 14 Jan 2007, 4:11pm

I dont know is the answer to most of the questions -
It is a PC - I will try ctrl -alt -del next time it happens and note which forum page
thank you for helping

David · Postby **David** » 14 Jan 2007, 4:51pm

I'd be surprised if it was the forum causing problems - the upgrade has moved to a more reliable and robust system. There is no M$ involvement so this has to be a good thing.

A lock up as you describe is normally a problem with your computer. My box sometimes does this and I can recover it quite easily, however the problem I have is with a dodgy KVM switch and a very old keyboard. Next time it happens, try unpluggingthe keyboard and then plug it back in and see if it starts responfding to that.

Unfortunately, what we all need in the computer world is a 'repeatable' problem, i.e. one that you can make happen upon request, without that we are all going to be guessing as to the cause - and the cure, especially as we are remote.

CTRL-ALT-DEL and power cycling are the stock responses and there really isn't much of an alternative unless the problem is repeatable.

It may be worthwhile making a note of the problem and seeing if any other sites exhibit it.

TTFN

D

thirdcrank · Postby **thirdcrank** » 14 Jan 2007, 8:50pm

I do not know if it caused by a lot of perople being logged on but this evening, there have been several times when the set-up has been very slow.

Fonant · Postby **Fonant** » 14 Jan 2007, 9:58pm

David wrote:CTRL-ALT-DEL and power cycling are the stock responses

I was really asking if it worked in case we could get a task list, to see what else was running on the computer when it hangs. There might be something taking 100% CPU.

Fonant · Postby **Fonant** » 14 Jan 2007, 10:00pm

thirdcrank wrote:I do not know if it caused by a lot of perople being logged on but this evening, there have been several times when the set-up has been very slow.

The server doesn't show any signs of being overloaded. CPU is normal (averages at about 12%) and network no more busy than normal.

David · Postby **David** » 15 Jan 2007, 4:01pm

thirdcrank wrote:I do not know if it caused by a lot of perople being logged on but this evening, there have been several times when the set-up has been very slow.

Slowness is difficult to track down - there are several hops between you and the server, any of which could be causing the poor response. You can't even reliably do a comparison test with another website simply because the traffic will take a different route (bit like saying I can't get to Cornwall but I can get to Edingurgh and saying it must be a problem in Cornwall when the problem is on the M621).

WEBADMINS: You could always turn on server status and server info if it gets to be a problem. From my POV, I've not seen any problems (perhaps I shouldn't have said because I now expect my computer to explode and the wires between me and the exchange to glow red and melt :-(

)

TTFN

D

Fonant · Postby **Fonant** » 15 Jan 2007, 4:52pm

David wrote:WEBADMINS: You could always turn on server status and server info if it gets to be a problem.

Is this a phpBB MOD?

Anyway, the server is quite happy with the Forum load at the moment. If we got slashdotted that would probably change though

Jac · Postby **Jac** » 15 Jan 2007, 4:53pm

I have not had any problems today. Unplugged keyboard and mouse as you suggested and it seems to be ok - fingers crossed - at the moment
thanks for your help

Fonant · Postby **Fonant** » 15 Jan 2007, 4:55pm

No problem Jac, please do let us know if you have problems again. Even if it's not caused by the Forum, we still might be able to help

David · Postby **David** » 15 Jan 2007, 5:09pm

Fonant wrote:
David wrote:WEBADMINS: You could always turn on server status and server info if it gets to be a problem.

Is this a phpBB MOD?

Anyway, the server is quite happy with the Forum load at the moment. If we got slashdotted that would probably change though

It's an apache thing, very useful it is, it gives you info on traffic, processes, time to serve requests etc. It's normally built in but commented out in the config file. On deadrat servers it will be in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf. Just do a search for server-status and server-info. Set the allow from up carefully too - you don't want any old oik seeing the output :-)

For more info see :- http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/mod_status.html

TTFN

D

Fonant · Postby **Fonant** » 15 Jan 2007, 5:22pm

David wrote:It's an apache thing, very useful it is, it gives you info on traffic, processes, time to serve requests etc.

Ah, in which case I have plenty of that sort of information for my server

David · Postby **David** » 15 Jan 2007, 5:31pm

Fonant wrote:
David wrote:It's an apache thing, very useful it is, it gives you info on traffic, processes, time to serve requests etc.

Ah, in which case I have plenty of that sort of information for my server

Probably should've mentioned it's a snapshot of the server at that instant, not historical data.

Fonant · Postby **Fonant** » 15 Jan 2007, 5:36pm

David wrote:Probably should've mentioned it's a snapshot of the server at that instant, not historical data.

Yes. I use good-old ps for current server load things. And Nagios for load alerts, with webmin-stats for historical graphs to spot trends. I've also got Zend Platform installed, which gives lots of juicy info about PHP performance and this also issues alerts due to slow scripts, errors, etc.

Apache's mod_status looks a useful tool, but at the moment I'd rather not load it due to potential additional load and cross-virtual-domain security issues, as mentioned in the module documentation.