Resource Limit Is Reached?

This area is for the discussion of what's new, what's on your mind, and general photographic topics. A place to meet, make comments on this site, and get the latest community news.

Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau

NicoVB
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:53 am
Location: Belgium

Resource Limit Is Reached?

Post by NicoVB »

Hi admins,

I often experience following error when browsing the forum.
It's a blank page with following text
Resource Limit Is Reached

The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later.
Can you solve this?
When you make the most fantastic discovery, a lot of people want a piece of it...

Lou Jost
Posts: 5943
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:03 am
Location: Ecuador
Contact:

Post by Lou Jost »

I also often get that, even if just a couple of tabs are open.

Pau
Site Admin
Posts: 6051
Joined: Wed Jan 20, 2010 8:57 am
Location: Valencia, Spain

Post by Pau »

It has nothing to do with several tabs open at your browser (with a slow computer this can be problematic but doesn't induce this error). I often open lots of tabs at once.
It happens time to time, right now it's becoming pretty annoying.
This is due to some kind of server malfunction. Rik has contacted with them several times without a clear solution.

We can do little at the moment to fix it, sorry.
Pau

Lou Jost
Posts: 5943
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:03 am
Location: Ecuador
Contact:

Post by Lou Jost »

Ironically when I clicked to read Pau's new comment, I got a message instead: "Resource limit is reached".

johan
Posts: 1005
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 7:39 am
Contact:

Post by johan »

The hostpapa server that this site is hosted on is hitting some resource limits set by hostpapa. These are typically RAM, CPU or something else. Often these are set on servers where a lot of sites share the same server, in order that usage of one doesn't impact on other sites on the same server. I actually mailed the host myself a couple of years ago as an annoyed user but got nowhere. Unfortunately forums are quite resource and space intensive. Rik could try moving host but with this relatively old version of this forum software, a migration and possible upgrade like that is a whole barrel of unfun that I strongly suspect he'd rather avoid :)
My extreme-macro.co.uk site, a learning site. Your comments and input there would be gratefully appreciated.

NicoVB
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:53 am
Location: Belgium

Post by NicoVB »

johan wrote:The hostpapa server that this site is hosted on is hitting some resource limits set by hostpapa. These are typically RAM, CPU or something else. Often these are set on servers where a lot of sites share the same server, in order that usage of one doesn't impact on other sites on the same server. I actually mailed the host myself a couple of years ago as an annoyed user but got nowhere. Unfortunately forums are quite resource and space intensive.
I don't agree with that and why is this error occuring?
You only host txt and pictures here, that is not very intensive...
Do you have a php.ini in your root dir of the forum?
Is so plz add this line to it:

Code: Select all

memory_limit = 512M
If not, plz create it
johan wrote:Rik could try moving host but with this relatively old version of this forum software, a migration and possible upgrade like that is a whole barrel of unfun that I strongly suspect he'd rather avoid
That is indeed a hussle, but it can be done...
When you make the most fantastic discovery, a lot of people want a piece of it...

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23561
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

NeQo wrote:I don't agree with that and why is this error occuring?
You only host txt and pictures here, that is not very intensive...
Nonetheless, Johan's description is accurate.

The message reflects throttling at the level of the Apache web server, caused by a large number of expensive requests arriving too quickly together.

When it occurs, our admin panels always show an unusually large number of Guest logins from what appear to be robots of one sort or another.

The standard indexing robots are not so bad. Although they make lots of requests, the requests that they make are apparently fairly inexpensive and do not cause problems. For example just before I started to type this reply, the admin panel showed that in the preceding few minutes there had been 3 registered users and 163 guest logins, most of those from Google. The forum was running fine at that time.

In contrast, last night I logged on to find that the forum was hitting resource limits, and when I checked the status, I found that some unknown robot was doing nothing except trying to check user Profiles. This is a not an effective thing for a Guest robot to do, because nobody except logged-in users are permitted to look at profiles. In response to the request, the forum presents a login screen. I have no idea where the conversation with the robot goes from there, other than apparently consuming quite a few resources for no value. I blocked the offending IP address at the level of .htaccess, and the problem went away.

That was an unusual circumstance. More typically we find a robot apparently clicking buttons at random. (Guest logins trying to Post are good indicators.) Some of them may be ill-designed indexing robots; others we think are corporate firewalls that are proactively looking for malware on sites visited by users who live behind the firewall.

In any case, these instances of unusually high demand from robots end up acting as sort of unintended denial-of-service attacks. It doesn't take much load to do that because the forum is only hosted on an inexpensive shared server account.

Yes, we could probably solve the problem by just moving the forum to a higher class server. That would not be hugely difficult, or hugely expensive, but to date the annoyance has not been worth the trouble and expense to do it. That may change in the future, of course.

--Rik

dmillard
Posts: 636
Joined: Tue Oct 24, 2006 7:37 pm
Location: Austin, Texas

Post by dmillard »

Rik -

Thanks for explaining this issue so clearly. And thank you very much for administering this informative, inspiring site where civil discourse is the norm, rather than the exception.

David

Lou Jost
Posts: 5943
Joined: Fri Sep 04, 2015 7:03 am
Location: Ecuador
Contact:

Post by Lou Jost »

Yes, I second that. This is the most productive, civil, and interesting photography forum I have ever encountered. Hats off to you Rik and your co-mods! These resource limit problems are slightly annoying but not common, and the far bigger danger is that this forum should become a burden to you timewise to the point where you get tired of it. A few minor annoyances are a small price to pay. I'm sure we all understand the voluntary nature of the administration of this forum and can accept its limitations.

pierre
Posts: 288
Joined: Mon Jan 04, 2010 12:37 pm
Location: France, Var, Toulon

Resource Limit Is Reached?

Post by pierre »

Hello Rik,

Many thanks for those clear explanations.
Regards

Pierre

NicoVB
Posts: 146
Joined: Mon Jul 11, 2016 11:53 am
Location: Belgium

Post by NicoVB »

@rjlittlefield
Good thing you found out that it's a robot causing the problem.
I'm not sure if blocking the ip is a good permanent solution, it may work for now, but if the ip of that robot changes you hit the same problem.

I'm sure you know that you can add some lines to the robot.txt file and block them there, if not, read the following.
http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

And thx for looking into the problem.
When you make the most fantastic discovery, a lot of people want a piece of it...

johan
Posts: 1005
Joined: Tue Sep 06, 2011 7:39 am
Contact:

Post by johan »

robots.txt is thoroughly useless for blocking spambots :).
My extreme-macro.co.uk site, a learning site. Your comments and input there would be gratefully appreciated.

rjlittlefield
Site Admin
Posts: 23561
Joined: Tue Aug 01, 2006 8:34 am
Location: Richland, Washington State, USA
Contact:

Post by rjlittlefield »

johan wrote:robots.txt is thoroughly useless for blocking spambots :).
Indeed. robots.txt is a handy tool for communicating intent to friendly cooperative robots. It exerts no control whatsoever over unfriendly robots, which simply ignore it.

--Rik

abpho
Posts: 1524
Joined: Wed Aug 17, 2011 7:11 pm
Location: Earth

Post by abpho »

rjlittlefield wrote:When it occurs, our admin panels always show an unusually large number of Guest logins from what appear to be robots of one sort or another.
Is this what drove the user count up to 1193 on May 8 2011 at precisely 8:24pm? I've always wondered about HUGE that number.
I'm in Canada! Isn't that weird?

GaryB
Posts: 521
Joined: Fri Jul 29, 2016 12:18 pm

Post by GaryB »

I had the same resource issue but I treat it just like my wifi dropping out at home, it'll pass and I'll do something else until it's back up again.

To add to others comments, thank you Rik for a great site. :D

Post Reply Previous topicNext topic