# Error 500?



## zardnok (Jan 30, 2007)

Seems a number of times today when clicking various forums I have gotten an Error 500 message.  It seems to do it on a couple of different forum sections and sometimes even when I load the Index page.

It is working "now", but who knows how long that will last.  Not sure what Error 500 is, but figured I would let someone that might know in on this little happenstance.


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## dgross (Jan 30, 2007)

You too?! I thought it was my 'puter and re-stared it but every once in a while it still does it. Not a computer guru though. Anyone else having this trouble? Daun


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## cajun_1 (Jan 30, 2007)

I have been getting the same error 500 message. 3 times before I could post this.


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## tonto1117 (Jan 30, 2007)

I had the same trouble this afternoon as well as this evening, thought it might be my server but apparently not.


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## dgross (Jan 30, 2007)

I've never sent a message to Jeff but should someone do that? As previously stated, not the guru in this household- thats what my sweet (and currently snoring) hubby is :lol: .


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## dgross (Jan 30, 2007)

Hubby just informed me that it was my avatar Eli snoring not him  :oops: . Hee, Hee :oops:


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## tonto1117 (Jan 30, 2007)

Hi Daun, have not yet had a chance to say hello to you but have enjoyed reading your posts!! Yes I think somone should let should let( oops hiccup)  Jeff know, not sure how to do that myself, cajun_1???


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## TulsaJeff (Jan 30, 2007)

I received an email from our webhost today saying that we apparently overloaded the servers and as a result of that they have made some changes to restrict it from happening again..

The only thing I can figure is that when I sent the newsletter this morning, there must have been a ton of people who tried to access the link to the "Get Together" all at one time.

I will have to speak with them and see if I can get things back to normal. Until then it may be a little trying on the patience.

I will see what I can do.. here is the email if anyone is interested:


********************************

Hello,

We need to inform you that we had to impose some additional limits on the system resources usage for your account. These measures have been taken in order to cease a very high load on the server hosting smokingmeatforums.com.

To be more specific, we have limited:

- the number of processes your site can run at a time (3 concurrent processes)
- the execution timing of all your scripts (10 seconds per script)

The limitation barriers can be reached in cases of high load. We have to ensure that any such high loads would not affect the proper operation of our server. For your information any high server load could affect the performance of all the other web sites hosted on the same machine.

--
Best Regards,
Dimitar Ivanov
Abuse Team
ICDSoft.com

**********************************


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## cajun_1 (Jan 30, 2007)

TulsaJeff, Thank You for informing us. Glad to hear that your people informed you.


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## chris_harper (Jan 30, 2007)

it has been happening to me a few times the last few weeks.


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## chris_harper (Jan 30, 2007)

it has been happening to me a few times the last few weeks.


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## deejaydebi (Jan 30, 2007)

I had theat problem eariler today too and none of my posts are here.


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## deejaydebi (Jan 30, 2007)

I kept gettig a debug mode erroe too


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## chris_harper (Jan 30, 2007)

debi, i keep getting that debug mode thing too, and it double posts all my posts.


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## TulsaJeff (Jan 30, 2007)

Bad news folks..

It seems that we are up the creek without a paddle.. They are not budging on their stand so this will force us to make some changes most likely.

Here is what they said and I suppose it sounds somewhat convincing after seeing their data.

I would just like to say that it is a fine day when a lowly smoking meat forum causes such an earthquake on the server load that they actually want us to take our forum off the server and move it elsewhere.

It is a bad problem for us in one way but I think that has to make history somehow :D  :D 

All of you food porn-a-holics are at fault and you know it.. someone slobbered all over their keyboard and shorted something out all the way to the main frame! :lol: 

All kidding aside.. here is the email they sent back after I put up a great argument about how I was their best client.. yada..yada.. yada..


**********************************

Hello,

Unfortunately we cannot restore the default limits for your account as 
this will seriously endanger the server stability and performance.

The problem is not caused by the newsletter you have sent today 
(although it may have contributed to the load your site causes).
According to our statistics your account is causing most of the load on 
the hosting server for the past several months.
You may check the statistics for this month:

Date:            Average CPU time (%):
2007-01-28    221:58 (34.04%)   
2007-01-27    180:32 (24.43%)   
2007-01-26    212:12 (30.34%)
2007-01-24    220:56 (28.15%)
2007-01-23    196:42 (28.52%)
2007-01-22    203:14 (33.36%)
2007-01-21    241:10 (32.63%)
2007-01-20    209:14 (31.12%)
2007-01-19    206:05 (26.71%)
2007-01-18    192:44 (26.84%)
2007-01-17    207:22 (26.58%)
2007-01-16    213:35 (28.26%)
2007-01-15    249:45 (36.67%)
2007-01-14    277:39 (39.47%)
2007-01-13    155:04 (18.10%)
2007-01-12    270:01 (32.05%)
2007-01-11    155:30 (23.79%)
2007-01-10    174:54 (21.56%)
2007-01-09    156:15 (22.86%)
2007-01-08    197:07 (31.40%)
2007-01-07    224:45 (33.08%)
2007-01-06    208:38 (28.90%)
2007-01-05    171:44 (21.24%)
2007-01-04    190:56 (17.82%)
2007-01-03    144:50 (23.12%)
2007-01-02    218:06 (29.25%)
2007-01-01    223:00 (34.40%)
2006-12-31    223:23 (30.21%)
2006-12-25    240:45 (34.06%)


And for the previous months:

 From Date:      To Date:     Days:     Average CPU time:
2006-12-18    2006-12-24    7    212:01
2006-12-11    2006-12-17    7    177:39
2006-12-04    2006-12-10    7    168:28
2006-11-25    2006-12-03    9    168:00
2006-11-18    2006-11-24    7    168:20
2006-11-11    2006-11-17    7    126:49
2006-11-04    2006-11-10    7    127:14
2006-10-28    2006-11-03    7    98:22
2006-10-17    2006-10-27    10    64:39   

As you can see, since October 2006 the load your site causes has 
increased dramatically.

For your reference even the most heavy system processes running on the 
server have used less server resources for the past few months - 
vpopmail - usually the process requiring most server resources is using 
an average of 20% of the CPU time available, while your site goes over 
30% quite a lot of the time.
Since we run a shared hosting environment we cannot allow a single user 
to occupy all of the server resources - as this affects the performance 
of the whole server and all other account hosted there.

Unfortunately it seems that your site has outgrown the capacity of a 
shared hosting environment. Our advise is to seek for a good 
VPS/dedicated service provider and move this site there, as the server 
resources it requires cannot be satisfied by a shared hosting server.

Thank you.

Best Regards,
Ivailo Ivanov
Abuse Coordinator
ICDSoft.com


*********************************


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## zardnok (Jan 30, 2007)

I think the server now is able to host pictures for some folks and pics are considerably large files, not sure if requiring folks to use a 3rd party host (ie imageshack) would help with the CPU usage from the host end.  Also not sure what is needed to upgrade to a dedicated host server.

I can inquire with a buddy or two and see what he recommends.  (He runs an ISP and hosts my websites for me).

How many "hits" is SMF getting each day??  There has to be something that is pushing the limit.  A mostly text based web forum should not require that much resources.


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## TulsaJeff (Jan 30, 2007)

SMF gets between 60 and 80 thousand hits per day.. this month we are at 1.4 million hits so far to give you an indication.


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## illini (Jan 30, 2007)

Not to confuse the serious subject here :oops: 

The new post mechanism is really not acting right

A quick post never goes anywhere but to the Long post page (icons)
you can't do more edits there and by the time you mess around a lot of us are getting 2 or 3 identical posts submitted.

Could it be the SPAM BOT thing?

Jeff wishing you well on preserving this forum :!:  :!:


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## TulsaJeff (Jan 30, 2007)

I thought maybe it was related somehow until I spoke with the hosting guys and found out that they imposed some harsh limitations on our part of the server yesterday morning which is creating these errors.

The forums wants to run all of these scripts when someone posts and we are limited to 3 at one time.

They claim that our site is taking up 30%+ of the servers resources at any given time.

It looks like we will have to go to Virtual Private Server or a Dedicated Server to fix this problem. I am also looking at switching over to Vbulletin as well at the same time.

Hopefully this can all happen in the next week or two.. I am sweating moving this entire database to a new server but maybe it won't be that bad.

I will try to make it as seamless as possible so as to not interrupt conversation here but it may be down for a few hours.

I will let everyone know when this will happen as soon as I know something for sure.


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## smokyokie (Jan 30, 2007)

What newsletter?  I didn't get any notification.  I had the error 500 thing too, and have had it on several occasions prior as well.  It's good to know that it's not my computer's problem.

But I would like to receive the newsletter.

BTW Jeff, you don't suppose that the big increase in October '06 was due to me showing up in September do you? :lol:  :lol:  :lol:  :lol: 

Tim


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## chris_harper (Jan 30, 2007)

i got my newsletter today, tim. what, the forum might be down for a few hours? oh no, i will die!!! i almost live here.


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## mrgrumpy (Jan 30, 2007)

Cool.... I left a message here while ago, and it never showed up.... and neither of the error codes.

I guess that is what we get for being so popular.... :shock:  :shock: 

Bill


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## dgross (Jan 30, 2007)

Wow, it's good to be so popular and I guess these are the growing pains  :roll: ! Thanks Jeff for letting us know what has been going on 'cause it was getting a little annoying  :lol: . I know you've got a handle on things and thanks for such a great site- this is all ( mostly )your fault after all  :lol:  :lol: ! 
 Tonto1117, its good to hear from you and look forward to seeing you at the Smokefest? If not, look forward to reading your posts  :D . 
 Enjoy your smoke everyone, and, thank you again Jeff for hosting such a great place to exchange ideas  :D . Daun


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## cheech (Jan 30, 2007)

Jeff is there anything that we can do?
Is this something that you would like us to donate some funds to in order to keep the forum alive?


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## dgross (Jan 31, 2007)

Cheech, you are right, what can we do to help Jeff? Do we need to be more active in the tip jar area? Not sure what it will cost to get transfered to a larger server but would like to do our part to keep the TBS flowing  :) . Daun


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## TulsaJeff (Jan 31, 2007)

I have been doing some checking on prices and believe it or not it is not as much as I thought it would be.. I get some really good package deals with my current hosts on a shared server and end up paying about 45 dollars per year per site which is really good for what I get.

I just doubled our bandwidth on SMF and it is running about 75 per year now I believe on the shared server.

After checking out several of the best deals while taken into account the quality of service such as uptime, speed, etc. it looks like we can get something for about 19.95 per month which must be paid upfront annually.

That is $239.40 and should get us where we want to be in the way of bandwidth and disk space.

I would also like to go with a commercial forum software such as Vbulletin. It is a lot easier to work with on the admin side and allows a little more flexibility for multiple moderators, spam control, etc.

The full single site license for it is 160 dollars and is good for as long as you want to use it on a single site.

I am honored that you guys would offer to help with this.. that is just another example of the caliber of folks that this forum attracts. Everyone that I talk to says that this is the largest group of nice people on the entire internet and I tend to agree!

If you want to make a donation toward this just use the tip jar at the top left of the page at Smoking-Meat.com and I will put all donations toward this. I will make up the difference if we do not get enough within a reasonable amount of time.

So we will shoot for around 400 dollars and see how good we do..

Thank all of you for the great job that you do here.. keep up the great work!


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## ultramag (Feb 2, 2007)

It's no surprise you guys broke the server. I was away about 4 Â½ days and there were 885 posts to read when I got home. This is the happening place for sure.


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## TulsaJeff (Feb 2, 2007)

This is definitely a happening place.. I can't even keep up most of the time!

I have noticed, as has been mentioned in another post, that even when you get the crazy "debug" error, the post has already went through. If you go back and re-post it will then show up twice.

I normally just hit Ctrl+A and then Ctrl+C to copy the post I just wrote in case there is a problem and then hit the send button.

When it shows the debug error I just go ahead and go back to the forum to make sure it showed up and so far it is always there.

If there was a problem, I could just hit the post reply button again and paste the text I copied previously into a new message instead of having to type it again.

Hopefully in a week or so we won't have to deal with that anymore.. :D


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