The Lemon Fool

There have been a number of comments regarding slowness of the server, leading to duplicate posts this morning and yesterday.

If you get an inadvertent duplicate, please report it if you are unable to delete it yourself. A moderator will then do what is required.

TJH

Hmm...

Well my experience this morning, perhaps it's relevant. For the last hour or so, I've been prevented from browsing at https://www.lemonfool.co.uk

With my browser (FF 38.0.5 on Linux) reporting:

General Error
SQL ERROR [ mysqli ]

Connection timed out [2002]

An sql error occurred while fetching this page. Please contact an administrator if this problem persists.

Matt

Ditto with me. I expect that is why there have been no posts this morning since before 9 am.

Dod

Same here, only just managed to get onto the site.

It was noted, but nothing we Moderators could do without access to the site.

TJH

tjh290633 wrote:It was noted, but nothing we Moderators could do without access to the site.

TJH

I hope it doesn't indicate a genuine Database problem. Being a computer nerd, and knowing the MySQL is a (free) database implementation, my diagnosis is that webserver failed to retrieve a DB record, and that may have been what resulted in the Connection Attempt (i.e. us trying to browse) timing out.

I remember a forum I used to visit that lost heaps of content, due to similar, i.e. a database issue.

Matt

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:I hope it doesn't indicate a genuine Database problem. Being a computer nerd, and knowing the MySQL is a (free) database implementation, my diagnosis is that webserver failed to retrieve a DB record, and that may have been what resulted in the Connection Attempt (i.e. us trying to browse) timing out.

I remember a forum I used to visit that lost heaps of content, due to similar, i.e. a database issue.

Matt

I haven't developed with MySQL but I do know that it is now owned and developed by Oracle who were the 3rd largest software company by revenue in 2018. It's certainly a mature and well regarded product and used for millions of applications. Using it to run a forum is the database equivalent of child's play. Any loss of data is highly likely to be due to human error, hardware failure and\or insufficient backup and data-recovery resources. A problem caused by the design of the database rather than the way it is used seems highly unlikely to me. I spent years developing Access databases which were used by hundreds of people and are mere toys compared with MySQL implementations and only managed to corrupt one once and then because I was being particularly stupid.

RC

ReformedCharacter wrote:

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote:I hope it doesn't indicate a genuine Database problem. Being a computer nerd, and knowing the MySQL is a (free) database implementation, my diagnosis is that webserver failed to retrieve a DB record, and that may have been what resulted in the Connection Attempt (i.e. us trying to browse) timing out.

I remember a forum I used to visit that lost heaps of content, due to similar, i.e. a database issue.

Matt

I haven't developed with MySQL but I do know that it is now owned and developed by Oracle who were the 3rd largest software company by revenue in 2018. It's certainly a mature and well regarded product and used for millions of applications. Using it to run a forum is the database equivalent of child's play. Any loss of data is highly likely to be due to human error, hardware failure and\or insufficient backup and data-recovery resources. A problem caused by the design of the database rather than the way it is used seems highly unlikely to me. I spent years developing Access databases which were used by hundreds of people and are mere toys compared with MySQL implementations and only managed to corrupt one once and then because I was being particularly stupid.

RC

RC, there are many things that could have caused this. Let's hope it was something innocent. Losing a bunch of data for a forum that's only been running for 3 years would be very poor. The one I cited in my OP had at least 8 years behind it before the data loss there happened.

FWIW, I've done dev. work a long while ago on most of these RDBMSs (Sybase, Oracle, SQL server, MySQL, even the dreadful MS Access). I write debuggers for microprocessors now, so my days of SELECT, GROUP BY, ORDER BY, FOREIGN KEY, fortunately, are long gone

Matt

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote: I write debuggers for microprocessors now...

Matt

Are you a C programmer? If you are, I take my hat off to you

RC

ReformedCharacter wrote:

TheMotorcycleBoy wrote: I write debuggers for microprocessors now...

Matt

Are you a C programmer? If you are, I take my hat off to you

RC

Mostly C++ nowadays, but since the debugger is targetted at firmwares which themselves are coded in C and various different assembly languages, I kind of have to be proficient in those areas too. Also use python and shell script a lot these days.

The database stuff is behind me now, but it's definitely stressful and challenging work too. The worst thing with DBs is that architectures are often great when systems are young, but once you start to have millions of rows, possibly linked to other tables etc. then bad design decisions start to show and are very hard to fix, in a "live system".

later, Matt