Thread

I have version 1.6.6 installed, but these problems remain since 1.6.0.

I am using lots of caching, because of the bad design I had to do before embedded templates was introduced. I should really redesign the whole structure using these technique, but I don’t have time.

So I have 14 we, many relational fields. 3300 blog entries at all. But as I use tag caching, I used to have over 10.000 folders in system/cache/tag_cache!!! I figured out that my pages go better if I purge the cash periodically. This must be done by an FTP commander, because the script ends with timeout. So first I delete the folders, with the files, then i purge the cache from EE CP. Then everything works fine.

But after a while. For example now: I have only 150 directories here in tag_cache. 100 in page cache and none in others.

The problems:
- timeout - when editing a comment
- timeout - when editing a template
- timeout - when editing custom field
and si

In all cases, the update is done correctly, but something is happening afterwards, so the page ends with timeout. I am sure, that this must have something with tag caching, because after purge, everything works fine!

Please, take a look on that.

I’m going to shift up to ‘Tech Support’ for now, because I’m not spotting anything that looks like a bug at this point.  We’ll want to either replicate on another install, spot a php error, something like that- as well as eliminate plugins, server issues, etc. before we conclude a system bug.

Let us know if you have any extensions installed, what your php memory is, whether the cp in general seems slow or any particular pages.  Can you clear cache via ‘Admin- Utilities’ at all?  Even w/just a few in there?  If not, it suggests permissions may be interfering w/tag caching, which could be the source of some of these issues.

I had tested this in a linux virtual machine also. Where I did removed all the plugins, and extensions. It’s definitely in core EE.

FaithX, how much memory is allocated to EE? Robin also asked a few more specific questions.

Let us know if you have any extensions installed, what your php memory is, whether the cp in general seems slow or any particular pages.  Can you clear cache via ‘Admin- Utilities’ at all?  Even w/just a few in there?  If not, it suggests permissions may be interfering w/tag caching, which could be the source of some of these issues.

It’s a shared hosting. I did my virtual based on that. But I could not ask the provider to increase the values.

Database Version 5.0.22
Database Records 87218
Database Size 60.5 MB

Directive Local Value Master Value
allow_call_time_pass_reference On On
allow_url_fopen On On
always_populate_raw_post_data Off Off
arg_separator.input & &
arg_separator.output & &
asp_tags Off Off
auto_append_file no value no value
auto_globals_jit On On
auto_prepend_file no value no value
browscap /etc/php.ini.browscap /etc/php.ini.browscap
default_charset no value no value
default_mimetype text/html text/html
define_syslog_variables Off Off
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error_log /var/log/php-error.log /var/log/php-error.log
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error_reporting 2047 2039
expose_php Off Off
extension_dir ./ ./
file_uploads On On
highlight.bg #FFFFFF #FFFFFF
highlight.comment #FF8000 #FF8000
highlight.default #0000BB #0000BB
highlight.html #000000 #000000
highlight.keyword #007700 #007700
highlight.string #DD0000 #DD0000
html_errors On On
ignore_repeated_errors Off Off
ignore_repeated_source Off Off
ignore_user_abort Off Off
implicit_flush Off Off
include_path .:/usr/local/apache2/lib/php .:/usr/local/apache2/lib/php
log_errors On On
log_errors_max_len 1024 1024
magic_quotes_gpc Off Off
magic_quotes_runtime Off Off
magic_quotes_sybase Off Off
mail.force_extra_parameters no value no value
max_execution_time 5 5
max_input_time 60 60
open_basedir ************
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output_handler no value no value
post_max_size 8M 8M
precision 12 12
realpath_cache_size 16K 16K
realpath_cache_ttl 120 120
register_argc_argv On On
register_globals On On
register_long_arrays On On
report_memleaks On On
report_zend_debug On On
safe_mode On On
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safe_mode_gid Off Off
safe_mode_include_dir no value no value
sendmail_from no value no value
sendmail_path ******************* 
serialize_precision 100 100
short_open_tag On On
SMTP localhost localhost
smtp_port 25 25
sql.safe_mode Off Off
track_errors Off Off
unserialize_callback_func no value no value
upload_max_filesize 2M 2M
upload_tmp_dir ****************
user_dir no value no value
variables_order EGPCS EGPCS
xmlrpc_error_number 0 0
xmlrpc_errors Off Off
y2k_compliance On On
zend.ze1_compatibility_mode Off Off

Apache Version Apache
Apache API Version 20051115
Server Administrator **************** 
Hostname:Port ****************
User/Group apache(81)/81
Max Requests Per Child: 500 - Keep Alive: on - Max Per Connection: 100
Timeouts Connection: 300 - Keep-Alive: 1
Virtual Server Yes
Server Root /usr/local/apache2
Loaded Modules core mod_authn_file mod_authn_default mod_authz_host mod_authz_groupfile mod_authz_user mod_authz_default mod_auth_basic mod_include mod_log_config mod_env mod_expires mod_headers mod_setenvif mod_ssl prefork http_core mod_mime mod_status mod_autoindex mod_suexec mod_cgi mod_negotiation mod_dir mod_actions mod_alias mod_rewrite mod_so mod_cpuusage mod_php5

Directive Local Value Master Value
engine 1 1
last_modified 0 0
xbithack 0 0

Apache Environment
Variable Value
SCRIPT_URL ******************* 
SCRIPT_URI ******************* 
HTTP_ACCEPT image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, application/x-ms-application, application/x-ms-xbap, application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument, application/xaml+xml, */* 
HTTP_REFERER ******************* 
HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE hu-hu
HTTP_UA_CPU x86
HTTP_ACCEPT_ENCODING gzip, deflate
HTTP_IF_MODIFIED_SINCE Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:39:38 GMT
HTTP_USER_AGENT ******************* 
HTTP_HOST *******************
HTTP_CONNECTION Keep-Alive
HTTP_COOKIE ******************* 
PATH ******************* 
SERVER_SIGNATURE no value
SERVER_SOFTWARE Apache
SERVER_NAME ******************* 
SERVER_ADDR *******************
SERVER_PORT 80
REMOTE_ADDR *******************
DOCUMENT_ROOT ******************* 
SERVER_ADMIN ******************* 
SCRIPT_FILENAME ******************* 
REMOTE_PORT *******************
GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1
SERVER_PROTOCOL HTTP/1.1
REQUEST_METHOD GET
QUERY_STRING ******************* 
REQUEST_URI ******************* 
SCRIPT_NAME ******************* 

HTTP Headers Information
HTTP Request Headers
HTTP Request ******************* 
Accept image/gif, image/x-xbitmap, image/jpeg, image/pjpeg, application/x-shockwave-flash, application/vnd.ms-excel, application/vnd.ms-powerpoint, application/msword, application/x-ms-application, application/x-ms-xbap, application/vnd.ms-xpsdocument, application/xaml+xml, */* 
Referer ******************* 
Accept-Language hu-hu
UA-CPU x86
Accept-Encoding gzip, deflate
If-Modified-Since Thu, 04 Dec 2008 15:39:38 GMT
User-Agent ******************* 
Host *******************
Connection Keep-Alive
Cookie ******************* 

BCMath support enabled

ctype functions enabled

CURL support enabled
CURL Information libcurl/7.15.1 OpenSSL/0.9.7i zlib/1.2.3

date/time support enabled
Timezone Database Version 2005.18
Timezone Database internal
Default timezone Europe/Berlin

Directive Local Value

Can you clear cache via ‘Admin- Utilities’ at all? Even w/just a few in there?

Yes, definitely. It’s only a problem when there are thousands of them.

After the purge, everything is very fast in the CP.

I see, that there’s Safe Mode On. But I can’t do nothing with that.

FaithX, do you see how many of your problem descriptions end in “I can’t do anything about that”?  You can’t just blame EE because you are unable or unwilling to address your issues with hosting.

It sounds to me like you’re over-caching, and/or the storage array cannot keep up with the activity.  With safe mode enabled, there are many file based operations that might be failing silently, and increasing i/o time.  That you’re having timeouts in the control panel, where no db caching occurs, indicates that this is most likely a server issue.

In the past You’ve mentioned my DB is not so big. I think the same. It’s nothing special. It must be run easily. I think I did the site as best as I can, with the version I had at the beginning. Nobody will recode the site on every new EE version.

But I think it is a blame, that I can’t update a comment or a custom field property. What has this with I/O and cache? I can trace it out, and I can find what can cause this slow behaviour, but I think Your target is also to make EE better.

Let’s concentrate on one thing at this time.
Why I can’t update a simple comment? What is happening at the background?
I’d like to follow Your commands and recommendations, I hope I can do it.

I think I did the site as best as I can, with the version I had at the beginning. Nobody will recode the site on every new EE version.

No one is asking you to recode your site every version update, that’s never been necessary, but it’s been how long now?  Two+ years and 3 major versions?  At some point you need to optimize your templates using native features of the application; it’s all we can reasonably support, and is why we add some of these features in the first place.

I’d like to follow Your commands and recommendations, I hope I can do it.

You’re going to need to demonstrate some willingness to do so in this regard.  In the past you have not been open to our suggestions, and we cannot allow our support staff’s time to be cannibalized from helping other users if you refuse to listen to what they say.

You’ve mentioned my DB is not so big. I think the same. It’s nothing special. It must be run easily.

Going back to base issue we discovered in helping you in the past, you are correct.  There’s not really anything supremely unique or large about your installation that would justify the slowness and issues you’ve had.  We narrowed it down before to being hosted on a shared host packing too many people onto a single box, and catering toward static site delivery instead of PHP/MySQL based dynamic delivery.  If you want most or all of your problems to go away, spending half a day shopping for and moving to a new host would probably do it, simple as that.  No host worth their salt will even run PHP in safe mode: it’s not safe, it cripples functionality, and demonstrates a lack of knowledge (or desire) to configure servers to be PHP-friendly without compromising security.  Safe mode is in fact even being removed from PHP, because the creators acknowledge the harm it causes (crippled capabilities and false sense of security).

To the specific question:

Why I can’t update a simple comment? What is happening at the background?

Not much, really.  A couple queries to verify the comment ID and editing rights, caches are cleared, and then an update to the exp_comments table, followed by a redirect, unless you have an extension installed that uses the ‘update_comment_additional’ hook.  It sounds like your issues are stemming from the cache clearing.  Your cache files are being properly built, as you’ve verified, but it could be that directory read/write/delete functions from PHP are taking excessively long to execute, or are doing so and timing out with hidden errors.  If you open core.functions.php and find the delete_directory() method, try removing all of the @ symbols from the code (they suppress errors).  Then in cp.publish.php find the last two lines of the update_comment() method, and change them from:

$FNS->redirect($url);
exit;

to:

// $FNS->redirect($url);
exit('done');

Then try to update a comment, and see what the results are.  Make sure you have error reporting enabled in your Output and Debugging preferences; I see from your PHP Info above that display_errors is already enabled as necessary.

Thanks for the detailed info! Actually, I had to clear the cache, so the error is not appearing now. I have to wait again until it gets so many files again, then I will try You tricks.

Thanks in advance!

Well, let us know how it goes…