Hi<br /><br />UBB Threads was this weekend installed on a new dedicated server at http://www.koptalk.org for my busy site. I decided to dump my old site in favour for UBB Threads and everything was working fine until today.<br /><br />Allen installed the beta over the weekend until the final release came out and I had IIP running on the front page with most features enabled.<br /><br />Today, the site went down. I spoke to Digital Princeton who have been great with their support, this is their last email from them:<br /><br />Here is info you can send to your UBB person, some script is recursivlly <br />calling to a httpd process;<br /><br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: recursive call<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br />httpd in free(): warning: page is already free<br /><br /><br />Email me back and as soon as I get it, Ill turn PSA back on and you can go <br />in and shut down Whos Online and see if that helps. Ill watch the load <br />closely to see whats going on. <br /><br />------<br /><br />Any ideas what is happening? The guy thinks that the who's online feature could be causing it. I have emailed Allen but as I am in England I have no idea what the time difference is.<br /><br />Thanks very much for any help :-)<br /><br /> <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

<br />Hi Duncan, <br /> <br />Welcome to ThredasDev - even if you are a Liverpool support <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <br /> <br />I assume that you are on a Plesk account as he refers to PSA - the latest beta version runs fine on plesk - has anything been altered/customized on the site apart from IIP? <br /> <br />Is this the only application running on your site - or are there other scripts outside of threads. <br /> <br />Are there any visible errors when the site is up?

Hi - I know I'm unlucky to be a Red <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /> <br /> <br />Mike @ the hosting company said: <br /> <br />"the site is hosted on a dedicated box with Plesk 5.0.5 , what needs to be customised as far as IIP goes:? This is also the only script running on the server.no visable errors when site is running, the server load increases over span of about 10 min and the server crashes. There has to be some PHP script recursivlly calling to apache | httpd and not closing spawns. any ideas?" <br /> <br />There have been no other mods as far as I am aware. <br /> <br />At one point they turned the server back on for me so I could quickly log in and disable the various IIP features. I just left the shoutbox, couple of custom boxes, couple of news items, hot topic and search options on. The site still went off again after just a few minutes. <br /> <br />Thanks - I appreciate your help. <br /> <br /> <br />

Just received this from the hosts:<br /><br />Good News, <br /><br />You were not hacked. I have a feeling its a UBB coding problem:<br /><br />They dont seem to take use of some PHP commands that improve performace. You <br />can tell them about :<br /><br />http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.apache.php<br />and <br />http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.apache-child-terminate.php<br /><br />Might be an issue they overlooked. <br /><br />cust691506# ./chkrootkit<br />ROOTDIR is `/'<br />Checking `amd'... not infected<br />Checking `basename'... not infected<br />Checking `biff'... not infected<br />Checking `chfn'... not infected<br />Checking `chsh'... not infected<br />Checking `cron'... not infected<br />Checking `date'... not infected<br />Checking `du'... not infected<br />Checking `dirname'... not infected<br />Checking `echo'... not infected<br />Checking `egrep'... not infected<br />Checking `env'... not infected<br />Checking `find'... not infected<br />Checking `fingerd'... not infected<br />Checking `gpm'... not found<br />Checking `grep'... not infected<br />Checking `hdparm'... not found<br />Checking `su'... not infected<br />Checking `ifconfig'... not infected<br />Checking `inetd'... not infected<br />Checking `inetdconf'... not infected<br />Checking `identd'... not found<br />Checking `init'... not infected<br />Checking `killall'... not infected<br />Checking `ldsopreload'... not tested<br />Checking `login'... not infected<br />Checking `ls'... not infected<br />Checking `lsof'... not found<br />Checking `mail'... not infected<br />Checking `mingetty'... not found<br />Checking `netstat'... not infected<br />Checking `named'... not infected<br />Checking `passwd'... not infected<br />Checking `pidof'... not found<br />Checking `pop2'... not found<br />Checking `pop3'... not found<br />Checking `ps'... not infected<br />Checking `pstree'... not found<br />Checking `rpcinfo'... not infected<br />Checking `rlogind'... not infected<br />Checking `rshd'... not infected<br />Checking `slogin'... not infected<br />Checking `sendmail'... not infected<br />Checking `sshd'... not infected<br />Checking `syslogd'... not infected<br />Checking `tar'... not infected<br />Checking `tcpd'... not infected<br />Checking `tcpdump'... not infected<br />Checking `top'... not infected<br />Checking `telnetd'... not infected<br />Checking `timed'... not infected<br />Checking `traceroute'... not infected<br />Checking `w'... not infected<br />Checking `write'... not infected<br />Checking `aliens'... no suspect files<br />Searching for sniffer's logs, it may take a while... nothing found<br />Searching for HiDrootkit's default dir... nothing found<br />Searching for t0rn's default files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for t0rn's v8 defaults... nothing found<br />Searching for Lion Worm default files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for RSHA's default files and dir... nothing found<br />Searching for RH-Sharpe's default files... nothing found<br />Searching for Ambient's rootkit (ark) default files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for suspicious files and dirs, it may take a while... nothing found<br />Searching for LPD Worm files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for Ramen Worm files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for Maniac files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for RK17 files and dirs... nothing found<br />Searching for Ducoci rootkit... nothing found<br />Searching for Adore Worm... nothing found<br />Searching for ShitC Worm... nothing found<br />Searching for Omega Worm... nothing found<br />Searching for Sadmind/IIS Worm... nothing found<br />Searching for MonKit... nothing found<br />Searching for Showtee... nothing found<br />Searching for OpticKit... nothing found<br />Searching for T.R.K... nothing found<br />Searching for Mithra... nothing found<br />Searching for OBSD rk v1... nothing found<br />Searching for LOC rootkit ... nothing found<br />Searching for Romanian rootkit ... nothing found<br />Searching for anomalies in shell history files... nothing found<br />Checking `asp'... not infected<br />Checking `bindshell'... not infected<br />Checking `lkm'... Checking `rexedcs'... not found<br />Checking `sniffer'... not tested: can't exec ./ifpromisc<br />Checking `wted'... not tested: can't exec ./chkwtmp<br />Checking `scalper'... not infected<br />Checking `slapper'... not infected<br />Checking `z2'... not tested: can't exec ./chklastlog<br /><br /><br />----<br /><br />"also found some reference to php/apache things I felt might be causing the problem, but only UBB experts can answer what the problem is. "<br /><br />----<br /><br />All of above from the hosts. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/confused.gif" alt="" />

I enabled my PM as you requested but your post above has since been deleted <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> PM's enabled anyway.

Can you provide some details about your server?<br />-PHP Version<br />-MySQL Version<br />-Apache Version<br />-OS<br />-RAM<br />-CPU<br /><br />Some details about your ubb.threads installation:<br />-version<br />-size of the database <br />-maximum concurrent users online<br />-average users online<br />-are you using persistant connections or not?<br /><br /><br />Does the problem still occur if you disable IIP?<br />Do you cache your IIP or not? If so, enable caching.<br />

Sent your q's to the host who replied:<br /><br />P4 1.8 ghz<br />512 mb ram<br />40gb 7,200 rpm hd<br />Plesk Psa 5.0.5 <br />the os type is freebsd<br /><br />Could you get more info about this new IIP thing and what it does for me.<br /><br />---<br /><br />Allen Ayres will have all the answers to your questions. I'm not tech minded at all but was hoping there might be an easy answer that could have resolved this until I heard from him <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />Allen installed the latest beta of Threads as I wanted to get something on before the latest release. I think around 1200 people registered over the Bank Holiday weekend. So far over the quiet period of the weekend there was around 50 members and 170 guests online - this would have increased today I guess.<br /><br />I don't know how to disable IIP or change anything on it other than the left/centre/right off options etc.<br /><br />Threads is totally new to me and I have no experience of it having previously only used UBB Classic.<br /><br />Threads was going to be used as my main news site and I had spent all weekend adding various categories, forums and content. What should have been my first day today for everyone to have a good look around has been a disaster.<br /><br /><br /><br />

Duncan.<br /><br />Are you on a shared account, or on a dedicated server? I am assuming shared, otherwise your host would not have turned PSA off.

it's a dedicated server <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/cool.gif" alt="" />

A recursive call is when a function call's itself, I believe.<br /><br />function check() {<br /><br />if (check()) {<br /><br />echo "it's true";<br /><br />}<br /><br />return true;<br /><br />}<br /><br /><br />Or something like that. I can't think of anything in IIP that would cause this. I'm not 100% sure but I don't believe I have any specific functions in IIP. It uses the .threads functions and classes. But I'm not 100% sure that it's not IIP causing your problems.<br /><br />You should remove IIP and see if that corrects the problem. Knowing the version of Apache and MySQL and PHP will help others when trying to figure this out. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I guess I'd best wait for Allen to email me.... hope he hasn't gone on holiday <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Hosts: <br /><br />"Im 100% positive that its a php function recursivilly calling httpd spawns. I've programed in PHP/MySQL for over 4 years now. <br /><br />PLESK PSA 5.0.5<br />Apache: 1.3.27<br />MySQL: 3.23.55<br /><br />Some people are going to probably tell you that those are not the latest builds, but these are the latest builds that PLESK uses and they are all stable and secure."<br /><br />----<br /><br />Does this help at all?<br />

Yes, wait for Allen. He knows what he has done, has access to your server and he is familiar with IIP and ubb.threads.

[]Astaran said:<br />Yes, wait for Allen. He knows what he has done, has access to your server and he is familiar with IIP and ubb.threads. [/]<br /><br />Yes. I only called in here incase he was kicking about and incase it was just a simple problem that I could rectify some how even though I am no Threads expert <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />Thanks anyway guys...I've been a reader of the forums for some time.

heheh <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /> I just got back in early this am and am supposed to be working today <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/blush.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />IIP was the only modification added, hmmmm... maybe rick might have an answer.

[]<br />"Im 100% positive that its a php function recursivilly calling httpd spawns. I've programed in PHP/MySQL for over 4 years now. [/]<br /><br />There are only 2 spots that do recursive function calls postlist.php and showthreaded.php, but that is only to do post threading, they definitely don't create any new httpd processes. That would need to be done with a recursive call that maybe called a header("Location: ..."); or something of that nature which definitely isn't anything that .threads does.<br /><br />I did a quick search on deja and found alot of posts from users having these problems on specific OS's and php.

Found a couple more relating to FreeBSD and persistant mysql connections. Allen was going to make sure these were turned off.

[]Any ideas what is happening? The guy thinks that the who's online feature could be causing it.[/]<br /><br />The who's online screen only refreshes once every 60 seconds by default. So unless this script went totally beserk and decided to refresh over and over with no delay this wouldn't cause the problem <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" />

Now I just have to wait until Allen gets home from work <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/grin.gif" alt="" />

home for a little longer, then another meeting for a couple hours... it looks stable right now. I'll be hanging around tonight to see how it goes <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Try the domain www.koptalk.org and the entrance link, think they need changing back Allen? It will be stable now as there is no traffic here - it's 11.49pm <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />The minute I say the the site is open I expect the same will happen again. The hosts rebooted the machine several times and it was fine for about ten minutes then crashed each time. Because of the time difference it's probably hard to work out the peak times etc to compare with what you are used to.<br /><br />The site was fine this time last night etc, it was just in the morning when the traffic picked up that it went pear shaped and crashed leaving me sat all day scratching my head <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />I wonder what's causing this?

We'll turn IIP options on gradually... for now make sure 'welcome newest member' and 'featured member' are turned off, I remember someone saying how those were hard on the server... we'll turn the debugging info on at the bottom and watch. <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The problems are very similar to those a site on my server had. That had nothing to do with threads though, it was a loop that was badly written, causing it to go on infinately. And this code was run on almost every page on the site, which is very active. I spent ages trying to find the problem, asking the site owner several times if they had changed anything and they promised me that they had done nothing. Had to get outside help eventually and he managed to find the problem script.

Thanks Gardener <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />This is the only script on the site right now... possibly it was a fluke table-lockup, we'll know tomorrow when there's 3-400 people online <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

Seems to be doing well with 145 people online right now.. will check back after some :zzz:

It's just gone down again <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />It was working fine with around 350 on at one point and most of the IIP disabled as you know Allen.<br /><br />It was going fine until around 12.20pm UK time and then I just got the screen below. I have emailed support at the hosts again:<br /><br />Warning: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (61) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 35<br /><br />Warning: MySQL Connection Failed: Can't connect to local MySQL server through socket '/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock' (61) in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 35<br />SQL ERROR: Database error only visible to forum administrators<br /><br />Warning: mysql_select_db(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 45<br /><br />Warning: mysql_query(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 105<br />SQL ERROR: Database error only visible to forum administrators<br /><br />Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 131<br /><br />Warning: mysql_query(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 105<br />SQL ERROR: Database error only visible to forum administrators<br /><br />Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 131<br /><br />Warning: mysql_query(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL-Link resource in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 105<br />SQL ERROR: Database error only visible to forum administrators<br /><br />Warning: mysql_fetch_array(): supplied argument is not a valid MySQL result resource in /usr/local/psa/home/vhosts/koptalk.org/httpdocs/forum/mysql.inc.php on line 131<br />

It's working now with about 250 online.

Duncan - as this is a new server, you might like to ask your hosting company, why you are on a standard copy of PSA and not an RPM version. Plesk are dropping the standard version, and moving over entirely to RPM's. Also as your paths are different, it will give you headaches with regards to upgrades & patches.<br /><br />Plesk 6 will be out soon, so you might have problems upgrading - worth enquiring now, about having the RPM version of 5.0.5.

Just checked in on the site. Chugging along fine with about 500 people online right now.

Hi guys<br /><br />This is the latest email from Digital Princeton who have been great so far:<br /><br />Dunk, <br /> <br />We run a custom kernal FreeBSD that is made to handle a very high server load. From what I see in the logs there are 2 problems. The first is that there is some PHP recusivly calling it self and spawning new processes which don't get closed. This is what is taking up all the RAM and killing the box. The second is that there is no my.cnf for MySQL, this is something that you have to have Allen or whoever make. Its not really needed unless you like to tweak MySQL. I have other customers on 500Mhz Box's with 512 MB RAM running threads and they have 600+ users online at any given time. <br /><br />As Mike said to you there is deffinatly some script killing the box, hes the PHP master and I would have Allen or INFO pop look at that. <br /><br />We can add another 512MB RAM to your box, Mike also suggested that HD access times might becausing alittle bit of an issue als, but not much. <br /><br />We have some SCSI servers coming in Monday and could move you to one of them if you like. They are alittle more pricy though. I would be able to cut you a deal on one of them though if you wanted to try that. <br /><br />I want to have your site up and flying, but I feel right now its software more than hardware and I could put you on a DUAL XEON and it would still die. <br /><br />I just had the box rebooted again, the load goes to 5.0 after less than a minute on. When I show a process list, there are 1,000 + httpd process running using .05 % CPU there is way to many processes running because they are not closing, they are taking up the CPU and never giving it back to the system so it runs out and then dies. <br /><br />When you had the first page off yesterday the server ran just fine. Could you just run thr threads and not all the other stuff for a day and see how that goes. Have the index page go right to the forum. <br /><br />Steve Klenert<br />

Could a news site that checks my site every 5 minutes for updates cause any of this?<br /><br />When I update a news item I edit a page which can be found here:<br /><br />http://www.koptalk.com/regulars/newsnow.shtml<br /><br />Those items then appear at:<br /><br />http://www.newsnow.co.uk/newsfeed/?name=Liverpool<br /><br />It was just a thought.<br /><br />Threads is great when it's working fine. I just wish I could solve this. I wonder what this spawning thing is? The majority of IIP features are turned off.<br /><br />I don't mind upgrading the box if it will resolve the problem but as Steve says it wouldn't.<br /><br />Could it be the beta?<br /><br />I'd like to feed my kids next month, please help me out guys as this could destroy my business...Grrrr...I'll buy you a beer and treat you if I win the lottery <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/wink.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />I wish there was something I could do to fix it but I'm so lame it's untrue <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The 6.3 beta and the stable 6.2.3 version aren't too much different. At least not enough to cause these types of problems. To try and isolate this I'd do as he suggests. First, totally disable the IIP, just have the index be the forums. Then just to be safe you might want to disable this news checker you're refering to.<br /><br />1000+ httpd connections is definitely not normal as far as I'm aware and like I said earlier. There is nothing in threads that does recursive calls that would spawn additional httpd children.

Perhaps you should move to using UBB.threads 6.2.3 without IIP and see how things go. On the other machines your host mentions handling 600+ users with .threads what version are they running for software?<br /><br />Just a thought... <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

I'll see what Allen says when he's online later today...the time difference is a killer for me <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />The news checker thing just checks that one page to see if I have provided any new updates (I manually add each item whenever a new news item has been created/published). <br /><br />As I'm not tech minded I have no idea what 1000+ httpd connections are <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/frown.gif" alt="" /><br /><br />Such is life eh <img src="/forum/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />