Twenty-four things you can do to make SMF go faster

[Chip (OP)]

http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php?topic=293441.0

for Admins only.

[Narkotikon]

What if regular members want to make their browsing experience here faster?  What can they do? 

[Opus]

Chipper are you still running postgres?

Still on 1G RAM?

System tuning is the place to start. I'd recommend tuning the server before tuning the apps (not that mysql and PHP don't need tweaking, but the OS is the foundation).

It's all about the OSI model..

[Chip (OP)]

postgres is inactive. I have stopped quite a few daemons and processes as you and shirobug have advised me to do.

still one lonely gigabyte of memory but the system runs very well - lots of spare memory/buffers and about 2% CPU.

I just recently stopped the forum's auto reverse DNS lookups and tightened up Postfix and am actually quite happy with the performance.

the disk is SSD and really, it's only just the forum running on it anyway.

I just want some decent load now -- I posted this as a reference to whoever wants to be a spare Sysadmin but strangely enough, there are no takers ... 

I take a snapshot of memory, disk space, processes and collect netstat data every 15 minutes and there is no stress anywhere that I can find.

I hope all the effort that I put into iptables, fail2ban and postfix has stopped any attacks because I have a strong hunch that they were responsible for the resource shortages that lead to my 'sessions' table crashing.

so only subtle tweaks here and there, hence this thread.

thank you for your concern.

[Chip (OP)]

What if regular members want to make their browsing experience here faster?  What can they do?

Nark, I believe that any slowdowns are local issues at your end so aim for the highest network speed, addressing issues like time of day (contention), it's load, whether you use 3G/4G on the cellular network OR a faster router and/or link for cable/ADSL etc. can really boost performance.

as for your browser, I find chrome sometimes drags it's arse and Firefox is often so much faster so try alternate browsers - IME, that sometimes means a second or two as opposed to 30 seconds or more.

know your physical network paths and swap components in and out because the server is quite quick and it isn't the bottleneck.

SMF is good at kicking inactive users off.

I will keep tweaking my end but you have to take care of your end ... speak to your ISP if it slows down a lot.

also, I find that Win 8 beats Win 7 ... lots of variables.

my old 3G phone usually loads pages within 1-2 seconds.

[Opus]

I just want some decent load now -- I posted this as a reference to whoever wants to be a spare Sysadmin but strangely enough, there are no takers ... 

The problem is most people who know Linux/BSD/LAMP well enough to admin a production server, simply don't have a lot of time to volunteer, cos it's work.

I wish it was as easy as I volunteer my time and it all comes back around and everything is taken care of np, but shit don't work that way, at least not here. We barely made rent this month.. It's a privilege to be able to work for free.

Also, as I'm sure you know, taking on a server project can be quite a commitment! Shit always tends to crash at the worst fucking times, and then not only do you have a borked server, but pissed-off users to deal with too.

the memories...

Me I do work for BTC tho

[Chip (OP)]

fuck yeah - I constantly worry about system availability ...

my first and last thought of the day is "is the fucker still up?" and then when I am at a great distance from a laptop I think "don't crash now ya bastard".

yep, it's always with me because I want stability and need to keep you guys, the members, happy.

but you cheered me up - it IS a privilege to have the time to handle it; time, I have plenty of.

the system only failed 3 times last year so it's not too bad BUT I *always* worry because it WILL break sooner or later, that's a fact !

[Narkotikon]

Thanks. Some of that went over my head but some I understood. I always assumed it was because the server was in Singapore. I'll see what I can do.

[Chip (OP)]

not at all ... my mate built the servers and he spent about 60K on his host ... it's a quality build.

... but here's a trick: if a page doesn't load and just stops then close the tab or browser and restart the process - this is my quick-and-dirty fix that for me, solves most local issues.

I reboot my clients many times a day ... by turning my phone off for at least 10 seconds, gets me a new IP.

may it work for you too.

[Opus]

The best way to keep pages loading fast, I'd say is javascript management. WAY WAY WAY too many sites rely WAY too much on scripting and cross-site requests these days. Weed that crap out (or just avoid script heavy sites), and it's amazing how fast things start to work (unless of course you're running IE, then you probably have even more problems). NoScript and RequestPolicy are great plugins for managing scripts and external requests.

Tools like jv16powertools and that other one that'll come back to me -- it was a free browser scanner that rocked -- those tools worked well for cleaning a lot of the crap you can pick up surfing on a poorly protected windows machine, "BHO"s and other shit that embeds and then sucks resources.

A good AV suite should handle that kind of stuff if on windows, as long as it's been updated recently.

[Chip (OP)]

yep, i hate all that cross-linking too because you have to wait on THEIR site as well.

you will notice how this forum slows down when linking youtube videos - same headache.

[Narkotikon]

Thanks again Chipper and Chops for the advice. Normally on my laptop I would use Firefox as the browser. I agree that IE sucks. Right now I'm using Safari just because it's the default. Does Firefox have an app?  The device I'm on now is pretty fast. I was mainly asking for if I ever get my laptop running again. The site was rather slow on it, mainly when loading pages when I'd click on a new thread.

The AV suite I was using last was Kaspersky's premium deal. 30 day free trial, then I'd switch to something else. I'm sure I didn't even have Java installed on the laptop. I never used it and I read that you should uninstall it if you don't use it. It probably doesn't matter because I think you both are talking about JavaScript embedded in the browser. If so, then I'll use one of the plugins you suggested, Chops. Thanks for those.

I didn't mean to imply that the server was of poor quality by saying it was in Singapore, Chipper. I just meant that since it's on the other side of the planet respective to me, that it might take longer. I'm not sure if there's any logic in that.  Probably not.

[shirobug]

If the forums are slow for you, scroll down to the very bottom of any page on the forums and read the last line.

It looks like this:

Code: [Select]

Page created in 0.118 seconds with 44 queries.

If the page creation time is fast, any slowness is likely not the forums and more likely to be network or user related.

[Chip (OP)]

indeed. I wish I had mentioned that because I refer to it also. thank you for the support and the cool BBCode 'code'.

nark, I took no offense whatsoever ... it's all good.

[Chip (OP)]

It's not site/host's bandwidth either - we use about 1 GB/day out of 2000 GB/month ... the server's local links are super fast when you consider that proportion.