Thread

Hello, I have a site that has a template that fails silently (and instantly) if I try and output more than 74 records. For example here is a dump of the first 74, alphabetically sorted records and here is the same template with the limit set at 75.

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="wcsfp_2009_schedule" limit="74" orderby="title" sort="asc" disable="categories|category_fields|member_data|pagination|trackbacks" dynamic="off" require_entry="no"}
    <a href="http://www.wcsfp.com/index.php/2010/popup/event/{url_title}">{title}</a>

{/exp:weblog:entries}

and

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="wcsfp_2009_schedule" limit="75" orderby="title" sort="asc" disable="categories|category_fields|member_data|pagination|trackbacks" dynamic="off" require_entry="no"}
    <a href="http://www.wcsfp.com/index.php/2010/popup/event/{url_title}">{title}</a>

{/exp:weblog:entries}

respectively.

The same server can output (slowly) nearly 300 records involving at least two sets of relationships per record, so I’m pretty sure it isn’t related to the hardware the site is running on.

Additionally in the 74 entry list the next entry displays correctly is I change the sorting to descending, indicating (to me) that it isn’t an issue with a corrupt record.

I’ve enabled all the error reporting I could and the 75 record output still dies without a peep, and always instantly. I’ve also tried it with the previous years (wcsfp_2008_schedule and wcsfp_2007_schedule) weblogs with the same result, although the specific number of returned records vary.

Any suggestions on what could be causing this behavior?

What version and build of EE are you on? Any extensions? How much RAM does your server have? It certainly sounds like it’s running out of memory.

Doh!

ExpressionEngine 1.6.9

I’ve got numerous extensions installed, but none being used in the template. The code above is the only thing in the template. This is however a MSM site, and the 300 entry output is the primary site. I doubt that is relevant, but worth mentioning.

Other are:

LG .htaccess Generator (v.1.0.0)
Bystrom Pagination Extension (v.1.2)
Checkbox (v.1.0.1)
Clone Entries (v.1.1)
jQuery for the Control Panel (v.1.1.1)
Date Field Filter (v.1.0.0)
Delete Ratings (v.1.0.0)
Edit Remember (v.1.1.0)
Entry REEdirect (v.1.0.5)
Favorites (v.2.5.6)
FieldFrame (v.1.4.2)
Last_segment (v.1.0.2)
LG Addon Updater (v.1.0.2)
LG FirePHP (v.1.0.0)
Static Page Caching (v.1.6.1)
LG Social Bookmarks (v.2.0.2)
Low Seg2Cat (v.1.0.2)
File, by Mark Huot (v.3.1.1)
Multi Drop-down List (v.1.1.1)
Parse Rating Stats (v.1.0.0)
Rating (v.2.3.3)
Ordering by Ratings (v.1.0.0)
Related Entries Extension (v.1.1.2)
SL Combinator (v.2.1.0)
SL Field Formatting (v.1.0.2)
Solspace Software Update (v.1.0.2)
Solspace UI (v.1.0.1)
Tag Submit (v.2.6.6)
Tracker Extension (v.1.2.2)
User (v.2.0.9)

+ a couple of Solspace Modules, most of which are paired with an extension above.

We just got through our peak season and the server is still pimped out with at least 1GB or RAM, pretty sure it is 1.5GB though.

The behavior seems exactly like what I would expect from a memory shortage, but as you can see our system isn’t short of RAM at the moment. If it is running out of RAM I would think it is an indication of a recursive loop somewhere, but then I would expect the fail to take a little time. Additionally I can pull all 120 records quickly from within the control panel, which is fundamentally the same strain on the server as what I’m doing here.

I tried another experiment with the following code:

{exp:weblog:entries weblog="screenings" site="hotdocs" limit="75" orderby="title" sort="asc" disable="categories|category_fields|member_data|pagination|trackbacks" dynamic="off" require_entry="no"}
    {count} <a href="http://www.wcsfp.com/index.php/2010/popup/event/{url_title}">{title}</a>

{/exp:weblog:entries}

If I run this from http://www.hotdocs.ca/index.php/_beta/testraw_allevents/ I can easily return 300 listings, but from http://wcsfp.com/index.php/2010/testraw_allevents I need to cap the output to 75. This is the same exact template pulling the same data on the same hardware with very different performance results.

Food for thought.

Solved.

The last post got me thinking about what software related things could be different between the two domains. I had set PHP’s memory up to 150MB in the .htaccess file on hotdocs.ca previously because of an upload form on that domain. Setting it to 150MB on wcsfp.com allowed me to pull all 300 entries in the test above.

Man I wish I had someone in the office I could bounce this stuff off first. 😉

So it was a memory issue after all? Glad to hear you were able to track this down. Please post again in case there’s anything else.