Slow forum access times....anyone but me?

[mikewalsh]

Afternoon, gang.

Is it just me, or has anybody else been experiencing intermittent slow access times for the forum over the last several weeks?

This has been happening for me regardless of Puppy, browser OR whether or not the cache has been recently cleared. I must have re-booted the router more times this last month than I normally do in the course of a year, but it hasn't made any difference.

Just curious as to whether it might be an intermittent issue with the site's host VPS, or if it's just at my end.....

Mike.

[ozsouth]

@mikewalsh - yes. Sometimes very slow. Makes me think some DOS attack ghouls are having a go occasionally.

[wiak]

It's awful right now. Imagined it was Linux Mint, but no issues on other sites and now in Fedora Rawhide and still painful slow forum access. Seems to be getting worse. Something wrong, sorry.

[stevie pup]

Yes, happened to me an hour or two ago. Clicked on my shortcut to the forum but it was taking so long to do anything I went off to look at a news channel, then looked up some info about a TV programme. Both of those sites were fine. Came back to Puppy forum later and seems ok now.

!!! Ignore that last comment. It's gone slow again!

[Wiz57]

I've noticed it as well. Normally I open a suspected spam post in a new tab, and over the past few weeks it sometimes takes a
stop and reload before content is viewable. Very noticeable when the typical "3 post spammer" hits us and I'm trying to load
all 3 posts in different tabs, plus open the member profile page for appropriate action.
Wiz

[rockedge]

I have been monitoring this slowness for several days now. It seems to come and go and I have been looking at access and error logs but no signs as to why.

We have SSH access to the host server so I am able to login to look at htop and other command line tools to check for runaway processes which would indicate a DDos attack.

I might drop a line to the tech support to see if it is from a Bluehost activity or something is hammering at our door. Just when I think it's really broken the forum is suddenly fast and responsive again.

The other times the forum was so slow was prolonged endless http page requests from a spider bot called Knowledge AI going through the http links to murga-linux.com which was the old forum and now uses URL rewrite engine to convert the old murga forum links, which there are many many of out there, to resolve to the correct pages in the oldforum.puppylinux.com links. This I am able to see very clearly using SSH and running htop. Although the SSH connection also sometimes is effected by this slowness and becomes wobbly wonky.

Keeping an eye out and continue to investigate. Even the slightest hesitation in the forum's responsiveness and my mind goes right to "oh no". This happens a lot and even when there is really nothing wrong at all. Twice bitten and now a bit shy petting the dog (like my neighbors Chihuahua).

[oldaolgeezer]

Hi rockedge:

I'm not sure that this has anything to do with "new Forum" slowness, but I have noticed
that at the bottom left on the "old forum" page, daily and fairly often, there seems to
be hundreds of users online !

I think weeks or months ago, I seem to remember seeing only 30 or so users online on
the "old forum" per day.

( I'm reminded of that old ad on supermarket checkout magazines:
"inquiring minds want to know" ! )

Thank you for both forums and any comment.

Old Forum Aug 11 2023.png (29.35 KiB) Viewed 4074 times

[rockedge]

@oldaolgeezer The oldforum was the point where the last serious slowdown occurred! It was by a spider bot that hammered away at the old forum via http URL's only. Made a big impact and slowed it down to almost a complete crash. Shutting off the redirects cured it instantly but this time not seeing the same thing. It certainly could be something involving the oldforum.puppylinux.com.

Thanks for the head's up.

[greengeek]

Today when i try to log in to the forum i see an "establishing secure connection" message, then just back to the basic forum page. No switch to the login screen. Had to have 3 attempts at clicking the "login" button.
Probably unrelated but thought I would mention it.
Other than the login glitch the forum is working at normal speed for me.

[Flash]

Over the last few weeks, maybe two or three times has this forum not responded instantly. And then whatever caused it to pause apparently cleared up, because it didn't keep happening. So, no problem here.

[d-pupp]

I am having the same issue. Mostly very fast. However every once and a while it just almost freezes up for awhile and then returns to normal

[oldaolgeezer]

Hello rockedge:

Firstly, I, myself, haven't noticed any slow down of the "new forum".

I have noticed that at the bottom left on the "old forum" page, on recent days, there
were often hundreds of users online (I think more than 500 yesterday) !

I just noticed a big change today with only 40 or so users online on the "old forum".

Again, thank you for both forums and any comment.

[rockedge]

@oldaolgeezer Thanks for the head's up. I've been checking over the site metrics and it looks like several bots are causing excessive bandwidth consumption. Bots and scrapers are causing several hundred hits per minute on the old forum Murga forum at times. Difficult to control but I periodically dump the cache and kill all sessions but those actions have limited results. Occasionally other methods as well to reduce the loads caused by some of the more questionable bots and spiders and their suspicious intentions.

[peebee]

20 April 2024 @rockedge
The forum is being VERY slow for me today and on previous days - anybody else noticing?

[ozsouth]

Was very slow for me yesterday, but ok today.

[keniv]

Yes noticed it was very slow to open then slow moving from one topic to another but again seems back to normal today. I thought that it must have been at my end but as others have noticed this then perhaps not.

Ken.

[fredx181]

For me it's slow now, seems to depend on the time of day, yesterday it was slow in the morning, but ok in the evening.
EDIT: just 10 min later, it's fast again

[rockedge]

I feel like this is caused by these services that the host server uses like CloudFlare and similar that are used to enhance security and supposed to speed up the caches.. I can SSH directly into the server and look around with Htop and there is nothing out of the ordinary happening there. I will look over the logs....

I think the real problem is the new Bots that AI machines are sending out gathering data. Already hearing loud complaints from webmaster's about these ChatGPT Bots hogging resources while gathering (stealing) our information here on the site.

[fredx181]

I feel like this is caused by these services that the host server uses like CloudFlare and similar that are used to enhance security and supposed to speed up the caches.. I can SSH directly into the server and look around with Htop and there is nothing out of the ordinary happening there. I will look over the logs....

I think the real problem is the new Bots that AI machines are sending out gathering data. Already hearing loud complaints from webmaster's about these ChatGPT Bots hogging resources while gathering (stealing) our information here on the site.

When access time is fast (but it can change any minute), I see that only the 'normal' e.g. Bing and Google bots are active (registered users), is there perhaps a way to block these (terrible) ChatGPT Bots ?
edit; or that only ... and ... bots are allowed to spy (just thinking out loud, don't have any knowledge about this).

[Wiz57]

Does the forum server maintain a "robots.txt" file? If so, it could be edited to block AI bots like ChatGPT for a time period and see
what the access times are with them blocked. If there was no difference, could remove the blocks...if there were a noticeable
improvement, keep them and refine as needed.
Just an idea...I've noticed a few times over the last 4 or 5 days that initial loading time is slow, but opening new tabs seems to be
normal (whatever that is). I can't remember the exact message I received one time but it was something about the gateway not
responding in the timeframe alloted, possibly due to excess numbers of simultaneous requests???
Wiz

[rockedge]

The site was very slow again so I looked at a known culprit, the Knowledge AI Bot that hammers at http:// URL's. In our case the Bots are making many thousands of requests to the URL http://murga-linux.com which is slowing everything down and acts like a DDoS attack. The Knowledge AI Bot only can scan http://.

Since we've seen this behavior before I already have an easy OFF switch for the URL rewrite engine so temporarily any old links like http://murga-linux.com/puppy/?.............. no longer point to the oldforum URL that is itself reachable by SSL with https://.

Disabling the redirect and rewrite engine for a period of time will straighten things out and we should see an improvement on the forum's access / page rendering speeds.

[d-pupp]

@rockedge
I hate to say this... However I still am having slow access time on the forum. Sometimes 15 seconds to load a page. Also just now when I was mentioning you it couldn't fine a match for like 10 seconds.
I know you are working on this just wanted to let you know.
Thanks
d-pupp

[keniv]

Yep, same here. Just FYI, it's still usable just annoying.

Ken.

[Flash]

A week or so ago, long access times were the norm for me. I replaced my cable modem and, using Puppy's tools, disconnected and reconnected. Access is much quicker now.

[PipzDex]

This blew up in my face today!!

I don't know what it means, but it's never happened before.

preview.jpg (68.1 KiB) Viewed 2675 times

[bigpup]

The forum is slow to respond.

Takes about 30 sec. to 1 minute to do anything, after clicking on something.

I can see info on the bottom of the browser window showing what it is trying to do.
Each step in connecting and displaying is waiting, stopping, and starting.

[greengeek]

Also very slow here down in KiwiLand today.
Damn Ruskies.
Must be planning to sway the next American election again...

[keniv]

Yes again slow today and I would say worse than yesterday. Again I'm just reporting this. I've read the explanation of the problem so will wait and report when things improve.

Ken.

[backi]

Yes again slow today

......yes....can confirm .

[mikewalsh]

Yup; have to agree. I've never seen it this bad before. And it's ONLY the Puppy Forum. Every other site is loading fine.....

Average of 45-60 seconds PER page.

Mike.