We've recently had some problems with users' phpBB crashing Apache on one, particular server. It seems this program is very resource intensive and, if a site is popular, it quickly eats up all PHP resources.

My question - have any of you had similar problems with phpBB?

For the first time, we've actually banned a particular program from our servers (phpBB). Generally, we just say "if your program uses too much server resources..." But, we've now added "phpBB is strictly prohibited".

Thoughts? Experiences?

--Tina

No problems so far with phpBB and we even encourage the use of it - but we have banned UBB and YABB as they are resource hogs.

phpBB shouldnt be that intensive that it would crash Apache, are you sure the issue is not related to something else?

No problems here. Which version of phpBB is your client using?

I had the same problem with PHPbb in a popular site when they do searchs.

I'm thinking in bann phpbb too, I already did it with Yabb and UBB.

I have not noticed any problems with phpBB 1.x or 2.x on any of my servers.

-Dan

Which version of phpBB is causing the problems Tina?

We don't allow UBB, Yabb, and the CGI version of ikonboard, but have actually encouraged users in the past to try phpBB.

We have not seen any problems with phpBB, However the other mentioned above have been problems for us also..

I am curious as to what the machine specs are and how many hits the forum is actually getting, it seems odd for this to happen.

The site that caused me problem have 30 GB BW Month, and the server is a Dual P III 933, 1.5 GB RAM and it have 200 accounts in there

Hi Tina, really look at your machine, there might be a small problem around that you don't see.

We encourage the use of phpbb on our systems. It's the least intensive forum that we know of that it is free, easy to install for a client and helps them.

Now we have banned phpnuke. Security issues abound and resource hog.
we accept Postnuke from v.64 and up ( same as phpnuke but much better ) and it's an easy install. but be careful, clients like to make alot of databases with the "nuke" systems so you might want to restrict that to a limit of 5 per account.

Mike

For a price...anything.

However, we do have our preferences and they are either VBulletin, Ikonboard (MySQL version), or Burning Board. Also, because we offer installs to our customers for a small fee, it helps us to steer them toward these three.

As to the others, like any other software we just continue to monitor the site and make sure it doesn't impact other sites. If it does we move it to a more suitable server.

Originally posted by AffordableHost
We've recently had some problems with users' phpBB crashing Apache on one, particular server. It seems this program is very resource intensive and, if a site is popular, it quickly eats up all PHP resources.

My question - have any of you had similar problems with phpBB?

For the first time, we've actually banned a particular program from our servers (phpBB). Generally, we just say "if your program uses too much server resources..." But, we've now added "phpBB is strictly prohibited".

Thoughts? Experiences?

--Tina

Tina,

We have a very busy PHPBB 2.0 board on one of our servers. (http://demo.montreal-subaru-club.com) We've never seen any problems with Apache, PHP or MySQL as a result. The server hosts only about 25 sites in total, has dual 400mhz processors and 128 MB of RAM.

The only problem I know of is that they are missing a css file somewhere on their site. Whenever I 'tail -f error_log' it comes up two or three times a second. :-)

Take care,

Brian

I highly recommend phpBB. It is simple, powerful, easy, and takes up the least amount of resources.. nuff said.

Hi Tina,

As you can imagine we're a little concerned that phpBB has caused you so many problems you've decided to change your policy to prohibit it's use. It's our experience that phpBB 1.x (and so far, 2.x) is actually quite lean in resource useage (except searches on busy, large boards when using 1.x, not a problem with 2.x).

If you'd care to either post the details of which phpBB version and which script within that version was causing you difficulty (with details of your server setup/load) over at our phpBB2 test forums (or indeed, PM myself (psoTFX), thefinn, ffeingol, BartVB or any other developer also at our phpBB2 test board) we'll try and look into the matter as soon as we can (no promises but we'll try).

The forums are @ http://phpbb.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/

Many thanks,

Originally posted by psoTFX
Hi Tina,

... we'll try and look into the matter as soon as we can (no promises but we'll try).

The forums are @ http://phpbb.sourceforge.net/phpBB2/

Many thanks,

Boy word gets around the net awfully fast. Its amazing that you get support for free software this good, and you can pay hundreds for commercial software and then have to pay $35 per call for support. :-)

Take care,

Brian

Ain't it funny how that works?

-Dan

Yea,

I would have replied quicker about this, but it was a pretty busy "work" work day today ;)

Frank

Hello

I have installed more than 20 phpBBs las year. I have not seen so heavy loads with V1.4 but I am in doubt about version 2.0.

Perhaps Frank can tell us how much is its load in comparison to v1.4. I have seen that pages come up more more slower than version 1.4 but as it uses more graphics on its pages it may be for this reason.

Now that XMB is added to CPanel and users are able to install it simply by clicking on its Icon I don't know what to decide? (I avoid this by assigning cpanel themes that do not have XMB Icon :))

Has anyone compared XMB with phpBB V2.0 ? My experience shows that it is very faster than phpBB2.0. Should we suggest XMB to customers instead of phpBB ?

I have also tested others. WBB (Woltlab Burning Board) is a little slower than phpBB so I assume that its queries create a little more load.

I am very interested in this subject because I am asked about this several times a week. Also I don't want to see so many BBs banned some day :D :D as their owners may want to kill me.

Mac

We run manny instances of phpBB and phpBB2 and it works great on our servers. We used to run phpBB.com's actuall forums, and they were never a hog on resources, except bandwidth, which is why the forums are at sourceforge now, haha.

phpBB runs great and I recommend it to all my customers looking for a forum system.

Tina,
I would suggest checking the php installation. Maybe recompile it. This may solve the problem. phpBB is very neat..
You must not loose valuable customers... :)

Have a great day :)

regards
amar

P.S. You can also recommend burning board to clients who want a free feature rich fourm.... :)

After a more thorough investigation - we've decided that particular machine is crap.

We've had to restart Apache on that one machine constantly - something that is VERY rare for all of our other machines. We shut down a few instances of phpBB and the problem seemed to lessen. However, we are now convinced that it is probably a faulty processor on that machine. The manufacturer is overnighting us a new server and *fingers crossed* this SHOULD fix all the problems.

I haven't had a good night's sleep in over 3 weeks! :bawling:

--Tina

Let me guess it is an AMD processor. K6 or Duron or athlon....
If yes then the gifs are creating the problem... :)

Have a great day :)

regards
amar

Originally posted by AffordableHost
After a more thorough investigation - we've decided that particular machine is crap.

We've had to restart Apache on that one machine constantly - something that is VERY rare for all of our other machines. We shut down a few instances of phpBB and the problem seemed to lessen. However, we are now convinced that it is probably a faulty processor on that machine. The manufacturer is overnighting us a new server and *fingers crossed* this SHOULD fix all the problems.

I haven't had a good night's sleep in over 3 weeks! :bawling:

--Tina

Originally posted by AffordableHost

We shut down a few instances of phpBB and the problem seemed to lessen. However, we are now convinced that it is probably a faulty processor on that machine. The manufacturer is overnighting us a new server and *fingers crossed* this SHOULD fix all the problems.

--Tina

Dear Tina,

Could you please explain how you came to the "fauty processor" solution. That I think would be most helpful to many other parties within this community.

if it was software we would love to know which one it was.

Thank You
Mike from adehost.com

Hii there,

I see here some of the hosting providers concerned abt the phpBB resource usage...

I am not a expert in hosting b solutions..yet...i have a small suggestion....probably...fast php or persistent db connection enabling of your hosting servers will help a lot...!

Any thoughts...

:)

Just a "me too" message to say that we like phpBB and when a client sets up a forum for their site, if it's, say YABB, we contact them and try to convince them to adopt phpBB since it's always been easy on our servers.

Hey, side note: what's that buziness with AMD processors and GIFs???

We have Intel CPUs so far but are considering going with AMD processors in the future, so that's kinda spooky :confused:

this is an OLD problem with k6-2 and early duron and athlon chips as discussed here - http://www.gordonfamily.com/AMD/ -- this was caused by incomplete QA and variations in mfg conditions. At the start of 2001 AMD improved their QA to find and stomp out this problem. It does not happen in chips from AMD any longer. I've personally built a dozen machines in the past 6 months and had no such issues.


regards,

Z-.

and for the record its jpegs not gifs =)

We install XMB or phpBB 2.0 as standard for any hosting customer that requests it. We prefer phpBB 2.0 as its more stable at the moment.

aventure-media.co.uk/services/hosting
Richard