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  1. #1

    Angry newbie to dedicated server

    I am totally new to dedicated server and I have dedicated a linux server with the following spec :

    ===============
    1xPIII 1.13 GHz CPU
    Dual CPU Capable Server Board
    1x 256MB ECC SDRAM
    2x 40GB EIDE HDD
    1x 52x CD-ROM Drive
    1x 1.44MB FDD
    RAID 0
    Industrial Standard Rack-Mount Server Chassis
    Esim Webppliance 3.1 (100 Domains License)
    RedHat 7.2
    Uumetered Data Transfer
    2x IP's
    Basic Server Operations Monitoring
    ================

    Previously, my website was located at a shared server, but my webhoster has asked me to move out becasue i have over used the bandwidth. My website contains a lots of video clips and my chatroom is always congested. (normal day 30 users and during special event 100 users).

    MY QUESTIONS ARE - why is my chatroom still running very slow and unstable even I have transferred my website to a dedicated server?
    My webhoster told me that this is due to the memory ? (which i don't understand ). can anyone advise me how much memory is required to make my chatroom run more faster and stable during a hundered users chat session?



    Thank You.
    Kia

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Troy, Missouri USA
    Posts
    1,299

    Question Info

    What Chat Room are you running?
    Can you post the domain name?
    Have you run "TOP" to see your cpu useages?
    You might be swapping to the hard drive too much.

    Yes 256K is low for a server... 512k or even 1gb would be much better.


    NOTE:Using a RAID 0 array without backing up any changes made to its data at least daily is a loud statement that the data is not important to you.
    Sitekeeper
    Google

  3. #3

    *

    Thank you for your reply, sitekeeper.
    I am using phpMyChat.
    Yes, my webhoster asked me to download a program call "Putty" (which i supposed u refers to "TOP" ) , but i don't understand what is it trying to tell me?

    I cannot post my website domain name because there are too many experts here, i feel shameful.

    Does your advise means that upgrading of memory to 512k or 1gb is a good solution to make my chatroom runs faster and smoother? If so, i will just ask my webhoster to upgrade for me.

    i don't understand your "note" :
    ========
    NOTE:Using a RAID 0 array without backing up any changes made to its data at least daily is a loud statement that the data is not important to you.
    =========

    I do not have much programming knowledge.

  4. #4
    Join Date
    May 2002
    Location
    East Bay, CA
    Posts
    1,250
    phpMyChat is suppose to be slow... I had a room setup using it that never had more than 10 people in it at a time (usually more like 5) and everyone constantly complained about it being slow, although I never personally used the chatroom (don't like live, one-on-one chat) so I never noticed the slowness, maybe you should try different chat software?

    Anyways 256MB memory is low, I have more on my desktop PC

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Troy, Missouri USA
    Posts
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    * System INFO

    Yes, get as much memory as you can; 1GB should be good enough.

    Use one of these programs to check you server both are good. servercheck is one file you will need to run from your cgi-bin, chmod it 755

    phpSysInfo is a easy to install, just copy all of the files to a dir on the server and go to that dir.

    phpSysInfo-2.1.tar.gz http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/p...ar.gz?download

    http://useforesite.com/
    servercheck.cgi
    Last edited by sitekeeper; 08-08-2002 at 07:08 AM.
    Sitekeeper
    Google

  6. #6
    There is page refresh time which its default is 10 seconds. This means that main chat page will refresh every 10 seconds.

    If you increase it your users will not complain but it may use more cpu process.

    I have seen a room with about 15 users which runs on a shared server without problem.

    Mac

  7. #7
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
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    World
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    Re: Info

    Originally posted by sitekeeper
    Yes 256K is low for a server... 512k or even 1gb would be much better.
    [/B]
    Wow ! 256 KB is far enough for a server with just one site on it using PHP ...

    Remember that most of hosts here who are doing shared hosting host 200+ sites on a pentium III 1 Mhz - 1GB RAM
    I sell nothing, I only buy

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Troy, Missouri USA
    Posts
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    Re: Re: Info

    Originally posted by alain


    Wow ! 256 KB is far enough for a server with just one site on it using PHP ...

    Remember that most of hosts here who are doing shared hosting host 200+ sites on a pentium III 1 Mhz - 1GB RAM
    An i386 with 64mb can host 200+ websites if the pages are just sitting there with no browsing them. so what..

    Most of these hosts you are talking about will never have 100 users on at the same time

    Did you read the post??
    My website contains a lots of video clips and my chatroom is always congested. (normal day 30 users and during special event 100 users).
    phpMyChat with 30 -100 users will chew through that 256k like it was nothing. Kia the extra memory should make a big difference.

    Please do a search on chat , phpmychat

    Here is one thread.

    http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...ight=phpMyChat
    Sitekeeper
    Google

  9. #9
    Join Date
    Jul 2001
    Location
    Troy, Missouri USA
    Posts
    1,299
    Originally posted by Kia
    [ i don't understand your "note" :
    ========
    NOTE:Using a RAID 0 array without backing up any changes made to its data at least daily is a loud statement that the data is not important to you.
    =========

    I do not have much programming knowledge. [/B]
    Simple explanation:
    If you are using IDE Raid 0 you have your data files broken into stripes and stored on two (or More) drives. While this is good for Audio and video streaming and editing because if you are reading/writing a 10MB file, the data is split into 5mb on one disk and 5mb on the other at the same time. You just cut the time it take to read/write the file in 1/2. (it is more technical then this)

    The Bad part is you doubled you chances of losing your data. Since your data is split into 2 drives Failure of any drive results in array being lost and immediate downtime until array can be rebuilt and data restored from backup.

    I use Raid 0 + 1 at home (4 HDs), that gives you the advantages of raid 0, Plus Mirroring, If any drive fails, the other set continues to function as a single drive until the failed drive is replaced.


    Please Read more at:
    http://www.arstechnica.com/paedia/r/raid-1.html
    Sitekeeper
    Google

  10. #10

    Smile

    hi sitekeeper, thanks a lot!

    your "Simple explanation" is too technical for me to understand, but anyway, i really aprreciated your reply.

    I read through the thread you provided and there are serveral chat programs which i have come across, but most of them seems to be used by big organizations. i don't think i am able to handle. moreover, my "vip client" has just learnt how to use phpmychat and i do not wish to change the chat program.

    i supposed my only solution to solve the chatroom problem is to upgrade my memory, right? and meanwhile, does the upgrading of memory also be helpful to my video clips ? i have about 300-400 video clips (rm format) in my website, each video file is approx. 2.5mb. My "production" (video clip) is increasing each day. I do not stream the video clips because i am afraid that this will cause my chatroom works even unstable. I don't know if i am correct to say this

    little bit about my website: i hosted this website for about one year, at the beginning, i signed up a very small host plan and because i am able to create lots of video files, i upgraded my host plan again and again. and eventually my web hoster "forced" me to dedicate my own server due to the over usage of data transfer rates. i setup the website for a hong kong tv actor who is quite popular in south east asia. his fans like to visit my chatroom because phpmychat supports their major languages. occasionally (during public holiday) i invite my "vip client" ( the tv actor ) to my chatroom and my server could handly handle 80-100 users, my whole phymychat program simple hang when it reaches 100 users.

  11. #11
    Join Date
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    Re: Re: Re: Info

    Originally posted by sitekeeper


    An i386 with 64mb can host 200+ websites if the pages are just sitting there with no browsing them. so what..

    Most of these hosts you are talking about will never have 100 users on at the same time

    Did you read the post??


    phpMyChat with 30 -100 users will chew through that 256k like it was nothing. Kia the extra memory should make a big difference.


    Yes i read the post and the post tells 30 users ! If you need 512 MB of RAM to handle a 30 users chat then change your chat system ! I've worked for a customer who handles 1000+ chatters on a P3-800 with 256 MB of RAM with no slowdown.
    I sell nothing, I only buy

  12. #12
    Hi alain,
    Would you mind telling me which chat program can handle 1000+ chatters? (200 chatters is already good enough for me. )
    by the way, 95% of my chatters are located outside my countries (outside the server base ) and using different kind of speed connections (from 56k to broadband) whether or not this is one of the factor that they complaint the chat program run very slow?

  13. #13
    Kia,

    Did you read my post. Give it a try and change refreshtime option in your phpMyChat configuration and it may fix it.

    I have a chat of that type and people used to nag until I changed it and everyone is happy now.

    Mac

  14. #14
    Hi wmac,
    I read your post, my refresh time is 5 seconds. If my chatroom has less than 20 users, it works pretty fine.

    My problem starts whenever my chatroom hits 30+ users, normally, users encountered slow refresh time, constantly "kicked out " from the chatroom for no reason and worst still, some even complaint that the program simply stop functioning (hang).

    i was wondering, since i installed my chat program in a dedicated server, why does this problem still exist ? I supposed a dedicated server has better performance than a shared server, it seems to me that the performance of my chatroom has no difference as installed in a shared server.

  15. #15
    Then you must consider a new chat room program.

    I had realized that phpMyAdmin does not run very well. Apache receives a request, parses it and runs some queries on MySQL, then modPhp and Apache create the page and send it to user.

    It seems to me that a chatroom with a Java Applet running on client side (connecting the server using socket connections) will need very lower server loads. This is the technique used in Java IRC Clients.

    Ask your data center to see if they will let you to run some kind of IRC daemon (I am not sure if it is safe as I have heared that it attracts DDOS Attacks etc) and then place Java Applet IRC client on your pages instead of current chat system.

    I think I will need to do the same thing as my chat room is going to have more people in it.

    Mac

  16. #16
    Thanks for your advice.

    Currently, I do not wish to change phpmychat, however, if there is really no choice, i will replace it with another chatroom program.

  17. #17
    Join Date
    Sep 2000
    Posts
    367
    get the ram

    if you intend on selling space as a host

    be wary of giving out ssh, get burned once and you wont do it again..


    miami_g

  18. #18
    Join Date
    Sep 2001
    Location
    World
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    145
    Originally posted by Kia
    Hi alain,
    Would you mind telling me which chat program can handle 1000+ chatters? (200 chatters is already good enough for me. )
    it was a java made one client/server ... i'll look forward for the name and tell you here ...
    I sell nothing, I only buy

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