Okay, I need some help settling a [minor] dispute . . .

While this pertains to a Cobalt RaQ, I think that the answer goes beyond them.

It is known that CGIs can slow down the performance of a RaQ.

Now. . . is it because . . .

1) The very fect that numerous scripts are installed on a server?

-OR-

2) Perfornce would be affected when the numerous scripts are actually running at the same time?

I hope that I am making sense and conveying what I intend to convey....

I just have to remember in the back of my head, "The customer is always right!"

Your thoughts please . . .

I think no.2 is correct!

AFAIK, no 2 is right. A script uses CPU and RAM only when it is run. And RaQs generally are not good performers when compared with the traditional PC boxes or PC based Rack mountable servers in this area. They just don't have 'nuff CPU power. Also mst NOCs don't give enough RAM on their RAQs by default.
Guess there may be some difference in the Linux kernels used on RaQs too. But I dont know anything about the RaQ kernel. Read something abt the kernel on some forum. Ask the Linux Gods :P

TheWingThing.

Well you got it right TheWingThing. Cgi scripts would slow down any system, when being used, not other wise. Its like saying, when the car is just standing, is it using the gas in it? No. So when the cgi script is not being used, no RAM or CPU is being used, so it would not slow down the system :)

But when the car is moving, it is using gas, and thus the gas starts to run out, which causes the car to slow down and eventually shut down! Same goes with the cgi script. When they are running, they eat into the RAM and CPU power, slowing the system down and eventually shutting it down!


Hope that explains it. ;)

Yep, you could install every script available on the server and that itself wouldn't affect anything. Run them all and you'd have a bar-be-que.

Originally posted by TheWingThing
Guess there may be some difference in the Linux kernels used on RaQs too. But I dont know anything about the RaQ kernel. Read something abt the kernel on some forum. Ask the Linux Gods :P

Linux the Cobalt way is simply Linux Red Hat 6 with some modifications here and there, but it is mainly a RH distribution. So... no there is no slow down on the kernel side. What is slow is the usual lack of RAM and a CPU that could be faster. (and yah, #2 is right)

Thanks for the follow-ups.

This is the situation:

A guy had several cgi scripts loaded over the weekend. Since then his index.html page takes forever to load. His tech support swears it is because of the cgi scripts.

Incidentally, none of the scripts run off the main page. The scripts are basically in abc.com/script

I knew his tech support was full of *script*, and I wanted to check with others to make absolutely sure I was right.

Thanks all.

Well if the site wwas running on a slow machine the scripts would cause a page to load slow. Exp. if its on a Cobalt Raq, Cobalts utilize AMD processors, which are not fast anyways but are also bad at handling any kind of content that is memory entensive.

I could understand that.

But the scripts aren't on the page. They just happen to be in the same directory as all the other pages and files. In fact, the scripts are in a separate subdirectory.

The scripts are on a different page, which by the way, loads much faster than the index page.

It is a shame when the scripts work faster on a machine that doesn't work well with scripts in the first place!

Oh well . . .

Howdy,

If the scripts aren't being ran as part of SSI on the page, there is no possible issue here.

However, what may really be the issue is the load on the server itself and the connectivity. If the page has no SSI on it, and its loading slow, it is one of a couple things:

a) Network connectivity: run a traceroute, see what it comes up with. There might be a bad router somewhere between the server and the client.

b) Server load problem: what is the load on the server itself like? If its above a 2 or so, they got a problem, and its not his fault. You may very well have an overloaded server. Even if the load is not at high levels, there may simply be too many clients connecting to the server at the same time, and the MAXCLIENTS setting (among several others) on Apache is not being set correctly.

However the bottom line is that slow page loads where SSI is not involved are NOT, I repeat, NOT caused by CGI scripts located within the same account. This is simply technically impossible :) A script is only ran when it is called, be it from SSI (Server-side includes, ie .shtml) or directly via a URL.


Sincerely yours,


Vladislav S. Davidzon, Senior Network Engineer
ThinkHost -- Honesty, Reliability, Trust.
http://www.thinkhost.com
davidzon@thinkhost.com

Give us the URL of the page and we'll review the source or the graphics to determine why the page is so slow.

Sometimes errors in the HTML code can make a browser (usually Netscape) think a page over 10 times before it displays.

Most often it is heavy graphics. If it was a cgi call we wouldn't be able to tell, but if it is more mundane, we could probably point it right out.

Sean

Now I am a bit confused here. It sounds as if the scripts *are* indeed running, and this could be slowing the server down, but one page taking longer to load than another (scripts aside) possibly sounds like either a graphic or table issue. Undefined tables within tables on a page = slow load.