Topic: ShoutBox big problem

[Melegna]

Hello all,

today my hosting provider have suspended my account and my SMF forum temporary due to a cache problem that impacted on the CPU/RAM of the server and on Apache making a system restart.

They find out a lot of request toward shoutbox link and they give me this as example:

"GET /ht/index.php?action=portal;sa=shoutbox;shoutbox_id=2;time=1280963558;xml HTTP/1.1" 200 501 "http://www.e-compa.com/ht/index.php/topic,5.0.html" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 6.0; SLCC1; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; Media Center PC 5.0; .NET CLR 3.0.04506; InfoPath.2; AskTbUT2V5/5.8.0.12304)"

Could you help me in that?

In attach you have my actual setting.

Thank You

P.S. I'm on a web hosting shared and it is a problem for the other users.

[Melegna]

Hello, nobody can help me? 

[[SiNaN]]

Do you have cache enabled for SMF? Admin > Server Settings > Caching

Also, it would be better if you increased the auto refresh time a bit or disabled it.

[Melegna]

In SMF I have Caching level at 1.

Could be a problem as in this topic?
http://simpleportal.net/index.php?topic=4126.0

[AngelinaBelle]

I hope that, by now, with shoutbox turned off, you have been able to run your forum again.
If you have a test forum, you should be able to test some things out with only seeing the shoutbox, without overloading the server.
 
In this thread, there are 3 suggested reasons for the problem.
1) too-frequent refresh times.  Try 15 seconds, or even 60.  How often is too often? depends on the number of users out there viewing a page with a shoutbox on it -- find out how many shoutbox requests you get per minute.
2) Caching.  I don't know if this would cause a problem. But you can try turning Caching off to see if it makes the problem better or worse, or no different.
3) parsing problem:  If there are any email addresses in your shouts, this *MIGHT* be the problem. The one-line fixed offered by another user, which prevents parse_bbc from ever seeing the @, might be a good way of diagnosing the problem.
 
To figure this out, I would suggest.
* Work with tech support so they can give you server log information while you run a few tests
 
Test 1: CPU load for 1 shout.
* Set up a shoutbox to "never" refresh.
* Make that shoutbox to only show up on 1 page (not the portal)
* Enable the shoutbox, send a shout to cause one refresh.  Find out what kind of CPU load that 1 request causes for the server.
 
Test 2: Change the Caching
* Turn off caching.
* Refresh portal. Find out what kind of CPU load that 1 request causes for the server.
 
Test 3: Eliminate the @ sign
* Send one shout with an email address. Find out what kind of CPU load that causes.
* Use the 1-line fix ( turn @ into (at) ). Refresh.  Find out what kind of CPU load that causes.
 
Trying one change at a time should help you narrow things down a bit.
Good luck.