Random Thread ~Usagi-Chan ☮ Tūsurī~

[erilaz]

I don't know if I'm going blind, crazy, or both.

I couldn't find my Limited B of Kobushi Sono Ichi. Not that I really needed it, since I had already imported it into my iTunes a few years ago, but the fact that I couldn't find the physical copy was driving me crazy. Since it was released after my 2015 trip to Japan, since it's not in oversized packaging, since I'd already listened to it, and since it doesn't contain a DVD or Blu-ray that still needed to be watched, it should have been in its proper alphabetical place in my stack of "to be filed" H!P, but I didn't see it there. So I looked everywhere else that it could possibly be (but shouldn't be). In the end, after about an hour, I looked through the "to be filed" stack again, and there it was: between Hello Pro Kenshuusei and LoVendoЯ, exactly where it was supposed to be.

[TotallyUncool]

You're a lot more organized than I am - my "to be filed" stack is more like an unorganized heap of "bought this somewhere at some point, have no clue about what it is or what to do with it."

[JonCC]

I'm just guessing that possibly one of the links or embedded images in the gif thread may be the most recent culprit. I've pushed the thread over to the next page; wondering if that will relieve the issue.

I feel like it's gotten worse. Getting it on the main page, when posting a reply, when quoting/editing a post,...
Even just refreshing a page.

[Celedam]

If someone else is visiting the site at the same time and they are triggering those wonky PHP scripts (i.e., by viewing a page with lots of embedded content), that can cause the site to pause for everyone. It depends on whether/how multi-threading is configured for the PHP engine on the host machine.

Possibly related: I've noticed that we routinely have 20–30 guests/lurkers these days. That's up from the 10–15 we previously had.

[Zunu]

In my case I've been noticing it rather less frequently as of late tbh. Although I have no real clue as to the cause other than Celedam's suggestions from his own expertise, one likely issue is that I haven't done a version upgrade in a long while. Reason for that is that I'd definitely want to clear myself a couple of days to make sure I have time to deal with any unexpected issues, but I haven't had a couple of free days back to back recently. I can manage it in February, probably not before that. If the problem gets much worse I'll try to risk it in January. However my past experience with these things is that they either go off without a hitch, why was I even worried???...OR they take a LOT longer with a lot more hair-pulling than originally anticipated. So I prefer to set aside as much time as possible. Anyway, at this point I have no idea if that is even the solution. Regardless it's still worth it to upgrade for the simple fact that the next version is (real) emoji compliant.

[Celedam]

I had another thought. If you're running this site on shared hosting, which means several customers/sites share a single physical server, and if multi-threading is poorly configured or not configured at all for the PHP engine on that server, then it's possible that another customer/site is choking the PHP engine and what we're seeing here is just a side effect.

So if you are running this site on shared hosting (I really don't know), try asking the admins if they're seeing unusual activity (e.g., resource usage, error logs) involving PHP.

Also, if you're thinking about upgrading phpBB, check or ask which version of PHP is currently installed on the server. A newer version of phpBB probably requires a newer version of PHP, and many admins don't bother to upgrade PHP in place because PHP is notoriously bad at backward compatibility and newer versions often break scripts written for older versions. If a specific customer requests a newer version of PHP, the admins might simply migrate that customer's account to a new server. I've gone through that a couple times with my own hosting.

[Zunu]

I thought maybe the same thing about the faulty shared hosting site, but intuitively it seemed to me that we're mostly seeing errors occur on pages of ours with lots of embedded content, as you noted earlier. And that would seemingly rule out placing the blame on a server-mate. But now that I've thought it through, your idea could still hold true even if the error's happening via the other shared site. A jplop page which takes 1000ms to be composited would be 10 times more likely to be get stuck while doing its thing than than a page which only takes 100ms to render. The content heavy pages are just getting stuck more often because they're a larger, slower target.

Thanks for the advice on checking the PHP version. It looks like my server is defaulted to 5.5 but I can manually set that for up to 7.3. The most recent version of phpBB lives in anywhere from 5.4.7 to less than 7.3, so for now it's (just barely) okay where it is.

[Celedam]

Happy Winter Solstice to those of you in the Northern Hemisphere.

It's been unusually sunny and mild here, for December in the Midwest, so I've been able to watch the shadows outside. Long shadows all day long, like just before sunset. The only way to see the passing of the day is to watch the gradual change in direction of those shadows. It seems weird, almost alien, even though I understand what's happening.

[Celedam]

Being an adult means not buying anything fun for Christmas and instead saving money to pay for the new chair, the new eyeglasses, the new tires, the new paint around the wheel well where it’s starting to chip, the insurance renewal...

...but that’s all next month. Right now, I just want to make it though the next two days without getting into an argument with my increasingly senile father. (No, that’s not an exaggeration or gratuitous insult.)

[Zunu]

^ I'm so sorry to hear that. My mom developed a form of dementia before she passed away a couple years back and it likewise made her difficult to get along with at times. It still stings me that we were both in a sour mood the last time I was able to speak with her. (My grandfather's senility was totally different; he became mostly contented and tranquil near the end.) So do I hope you're spared any quarrels, and that things go very well for you and your family this Christmas.

Happy holiday season to all.