I have a Counter Strike Source spray site where my users can come and download custom sprays for a game called Counter Strike Source.
This morning the largest Counter Strike news web page did an artical on us.
When I connected to my site I was pleased to see about 120 users online. But, moments later I was greeted by this:
Directory Listing Denied
This Virtual Directory does not allow contents to be listed.
I then recieved an e-mail from my web host:
Your website, thespraysource.com, was consistantly using 100% of the
system processor from approx. 12:30pm to 1:45pm EST today. This resulted
in problems on the server, and as a result, your website had to be
stopped. A trace of the files and folders in use at the time of the problem
is below. Please let us know when you have corrected this issue, and
your website will be restarted.
php.exe pid: 4188 WEB16\IUSR_WEB16
18: File C:\*******\*******\thespraysource.com
750: Section \BaseNamedObjects\NTFSDRV_OBJ0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
php.exe pid: 3668 WEB16\IUSR_WEB16
18: File C:\*******\********\thespraysource.com
750: Section \BaseNamedObjects\NTFSDRV_OBJ0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
php.exe pid: 3832 WEB16\IUSR_WEB16
18: File C:\******\*******\thespraysource.com
750: Section \BaseNamedObjects\NTFSDRV_OBJ0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
php.exe pid: 3880 WEB16\IUSR_WEB16
18: File C:\******\********\thespraysource.com
750: Section \BaseNamedObjects\NTFSDRV_OBJ0
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
php.exe pid: 3364 WEB16\IUSR_WEB16
18: File C:\******\********\thespraysource.com
750: Section \BaseNamedObjects\NTFSDRV_OBJ0

-------------------
I wasn't sure what these file ment so I contacted my host again and asked for a restart. This was there respons:


If you believe that a very large # of visitors was the cause of this
problem, then restarting your website will only result in the same
problem, requiring us to stop it again. We are unable to troubleshoot the
issue to determine the exact cause. Typically processor intensive dynamic
elements that are hit by a large number of simultaneous users will
cause problems like what happened today. If your website is very dynamic,
my only suggestion to you would be to remove some of the more dynamic
elements. Unless you can provide a resolution to this issue, we will be
unable to restart your website. Your website might be better suited for
a managed/virtual server environment, rather than a shared hosting
account.


My question is what could be causing this?
The only thing that I can think of thats dinamic on my web page is my phpaddsnew module where I have various add cycleing, the marquee where I have text scrolling and my top posters block scrolls. Should I upgrade my web host or should I try and trouble shoot my problem?

We need more information, such as:

1. Which modules do you have installed?

2. Which blocks were displayed on the front page?

3. Did you have persistent connection set to 'yes'? If so, turn it off.

The modules I have installed are:
wf-downloads
marquee
myalbum
newphpadds
antidos
and a tutorials module
All modules are latest versions
Plus I have most of the stock XOOPS modules installed.
I have the news section as my home page.
Whith these blocks on front page:
latest members
top downloads
recent downloads
random photo
who's online (plus I dowloaded an extra who's online that shows ip and where everyone is at, but it's only active for administrator.

top posters
recent threads
most viewed threads
top threads
and my phpnewadds module cycles a 120 x 600 scyscraper add on all pages.

I'm not sure about the persistent connection...If it is set to yes as default then it is set to yes.
I can't go into my site to trouble shoot it because my host wont turn it back on. Most likely i'm going to have to wait till late tonight and see if I can get it turned back on...It should be fairly calm then.
Could the phpadds be my problem?

At least get your host to start the website, and tell them you will turn it off in Preferences. That way at least, your visitors will see the Closed for Maintenance page and you can troubleshoot it then.

Hi harvester,

As rowdie touched on above, your XOOPS sites use of server resources is going to depend very much on two things more so than anything else;

1) What modules you have installed.

2) What you have your caching set to for both modules AND blocks.


Not all modules are created equal and some are quite ineffcient in the number of SQL queries they use, and in the way they process their data (sometimes both). In high traffic situations you REALLY want to be very careful as to what modules you do add to you site, and it is generally a VERY good idea to do some performance testing before letting them loose on your production site.

As XOOPS is a dynamic portal you also have to be ultra concious of both your module and block cache settings. Even more so when using a shared hosting service. By default, neither your modules, or your blocks will be cached, and everytime someone accesses your site all the queries and data has to be processed each time. When you utilise the caching functionality of Xoops, the output of your modules and blocks are stored in cache files, so that next time somebody accesses your site, instead of all the queries and data having to be processed again, that information is simply taken from the cache file. Having a well tuned cache setup makes a [size=xx-large]HUGE[/size] difference to site performance, and again even moreso on high traffic sites.



All this said though I am a little dubious as to how your web host has setup their server, and I have a questions for you to ask them;

(1) From the information in your post it appears that your site is being hosted on a Windows Server. Is this correct?

(2)If so, it also appears that they are using Microsoft's IIS webserver. Is this correct?

(3) If so, it also looks as if IIS is configured to run PHP in CGI mode. Is this correct?

(4) If so, then do that have it configured in fast_cgi and/or do they have any caching enabled such as Zend or Turck MMCache? Configuring IIS in this way can greatly improve efficiency.

Still, these for the most part are out of your control, so you're still probably best to first take a good hard look into optimising you sites caching setup from within Xoops.

Thank you very much for your reply.
Being very much an armature at all this I didn't know that my site needed to be "streamlined" as it were. I just got it the way I wanted it and let it do it's thing. I'll be looking allot more into some of the modules I have going and also I'll contact my host about the questions you asked. I can answer that they are on a windows and not Linux server... Thats about all I know. I have xsas and i'm doing some local tests to see what the problem is...and i'll contact my host and have them turn it back on so I can at least put up the closed for maintenance message.

Sorry, my original post was pretty brief...

The first thing to check is the persistent connection. If you can get to your files for your site, check the main.php file. Find:
define('XOOPS_DB_PCONNECT', 0);
If it's set to 0 that's ok, but if not then that's most likely a big part of your problem.

Then work on caching. As brash said, it can make a big difference. If you're still having problems after that you'll probably have to look at individual modules, and try to work out which is the problem.

Good luck with it - I hate to see a CS:S related site down

Rowd

Thank you...Yes I did find the persistent connection line in the main file.php and it's set to 0
So I guess I'm going to have to start looking into the modules...
Also one thing thats kinda off topic but something that I would like to get fixed in the future is when CSNation did there story they said to make sure to connect to my site with IE unless you want to get blinded by poor browser compatibility...Is this XOOPS in general that has this problem or just the theme I'm using? I'm using a modified version of the EDJ2.1 theme from the themes library on this site.

Hi harvester, check your PM's

Thank you all for your time. My site is back up and running.
I would like to personally thank brash for helping me out with my site. He came in and did alot of work with the cache and my server host was satisfied enuf to let the site back online. If it wasn't for all the great people here at XOOPS This noob would still be without a web page.
Thank you.