Unable to connect to forum webpage

[Phillip Coetser]

Hi guys, Phillip, I'm experiencing difficulties to connect to the forum webpage on a regular basis. Is there a problem from my side, please advise

[fugglefeet]

Hi all,

A bit of info on how the setup of the forum works. The server on which the forum is hosted is on a shared server. This means that there is one physical server (and all its resources) that is shared between anything from 8 to 16 virtual servers. Each virtual server is limited to 150MB of RAM and 600MB of HDD space that in turn resides on the physical server. The concept is known as virtualisation. Running the forum on a server of this specification has its drawbacks at times where the forum software utilises all of its virtual resources and cannot cope, resulting in the server issuing an Internal Server Error. Also take into account that the IP address that is being used by the forum is also being shared by 8 to 16 other CyberSmart customers that are also hosting their websites from the same physical server (this is known as virtual hosting). This is a limitation based on the package that was chosen when migrating the forum from the home based hosting to a co-located hosting service like CyberSmart. The current package makes it possible for the forum to be hosted at no cost per month and only cost incurred is the annual domain renewal fee of ~R75,00 (borne by myself). Upgrading to a better and bigger package will start to incur costs on a monthly basis that will then need to be passed on to the forum members or sponsors would need to be obtained resulting in a lock into a contract promoting only a specific brand of GPS. This is not what the intent was when starting the forum and this forum will remain a free forum.

With the forum server limitations in mind, the forum is also under attack from spammers that are attempting to hack their way into the forum to hijack it. This can also quickly deplete the available resources with their repeated attempts to break in. This is evidenced from the Wall of Shame, that shows that the forum has had over 17 000 hack attempts to spam the forum. Repeated hack attempts are blocked, but hackers persist by changing their IP addresses and all sorts of online info in an attempt to destabilise the forum.

Another factor that can contribute to the forum inaccessibility, is a web browser cache that still has in its cache a copy of the Internal Server Error page that the browser is presenting as opposed to an updated page from the website. Good practice is to regularly clear a web browser's cache to remove stale information of websites visited. Although a cached page in a web browser loads quicker when accessing a web page, usually the information on a cached page is stale due to most websites offering dynamic content based on location, locale settings and preferences whilst visiting a website (aka cookies). Most of the popular browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer) allow the user to set options to clear the cache automatically when the information in the cache reaches a certain age or size, thereby deleting older information in the cache (working on a first in first out basis date wise). This browser cache also resides on the client computer's HDD and can also impact on a PC's performance when accessing the internet.

The error in the last slide above is as a result of a miscommunication between the web server software and the database server software. The way the forum works software wise is as follows. The forum home page displays the information by connecting to a database server that stores the forums, topics and posts. The forum web software logs into the database server in the background to retrieve the information from the database. When the forum web software cannot establish a connection to the database, the result is the message shown in the last slide above and a restart of both the web server and database server is needed to resync the connection between the two. Now since the forum server is a co-located server in Cape Town, resetting the virtual or physical server is a bit beyond my reach and I am reliant on the hosting provider to do that for me. Normally the server is pretty stable and there have been no problems. This was a rare exception where Telkom had to do emergency maintenance at the CyberSmart data centre where the physical servers are. Also bear in mind that the database server and web server are also hosted on the small virtual server that is allocated to the forum to host its webpages.

[Phillip Coetser]

Hi Darryl, thank you for your reply.