Server issues ?

I've been getting the "Error 500" message from the server's apache process for the last 2 days straight. And if it works it is slow.

Is there a DOS attack running against the server, or is it just running out of memory ? I know that my virtual server answers web requests ultra slowly, if it hits the memory limit.

as i have these errors mostly on 'big' threads, like those spanning multiple sites i rather guess it is the second. One more f**** reason to switch to some decent software..

I have been finding this for the last few days as well. It seems to happen on posting a reply. It gets the reply but then times out before the reply is shown. Also the search is returning errors as well. Maybe ther are too many threads being saved.

As YaBB uses files for posts and possibly keeps a lot of them open, it may be needing quite a lot of memory. I don't know what overhead e.g. EXT3 or whatever the server uses as the file system has, but if it is short on RAM that can't be good. My vps just runs a web/mail/mysql server and some other minor things and constantly runs into the memory barrier (256MB).

Also if the yabb.cgi is run in standard cgi mode on apache (not using mod_perl, which gives a persistent perl interpreter and more speed, but needs unpleasant configs - at least some years ago) each time yabb.cgi is called all variables and so on are initialized again. This can become a huge overhead if things can't be cached. It makes programming easier, as you don't have to take care of some aspects of security as all variables are automatically destroyed if the script exits, but that is a different story. PHP doesn't do persistent variables either, but the PHP based forums all use mysql which keeps all the important stuff available and can be clever about how to do that effectively.

Typical virtualized linux servers based on virtuozzo (or openVZ) can dynamically grant more RAM to the machine if it needs it, but from experience that is heavily penalized in terms of speed. They want to encourage you to upgrade to a package with more RAM and pay some more too

We seem to be having this conversation every week or so now.

Word!

apparently i have to make a 'normal' post before i can post anything interesting. here you go.
btw, switching software isn't going to fix underpowered hardware....

apparently i have to make a 'normal' post before i can post anything interesting. here you go.

That is true. A chocking server may need more than just improved software, but it would help. The speed I observe at yabbforum.com is quite high, so this forum could be speedy as well. A sick server seems likely. When I had such issues a complaint to my service provider helped. They tend to run many virtual servers on each physical machine, sometimes too many it seems. After moving the container to a less stressed computer some problems may be gone.

I am pretty sure that if the current situation is caused by an underpowered virtual server package, this could be solved by getting a RAM upgrade for it. If you need cash for that, start a fundraiser, I'm in.

But there are also usability issues, not just speed and server errors that annoy the frequent visitors.

"Arduino is dead." Isn't that what Freescale wanted to have happen? Is that the actual headline we want to read about the Arduino? The Arduino is successful because of it's community... and this forum is the tool we use. Can the issues with hosting be corrected or is it a lost cause?

The admins are aware of the problem and working as fast as they can. That's certainly positive news!

See this post for info on what's done do address the problem:

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1256124633/15#20