From a post to the Dreamhost message board I made a while ago:
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This site sometimes takes less than a second, but sometimes takes 2 minutes to load a page. Often I'll get Internal Server Errors because of it.
- It's not client side, because it gives Internal Server Error, the script counts time on the server side, and other users have complained.
- It's not bandwidth related, because I can download from the site with static pages at full speed.
- It's not a CPU problem, because the CPU time for an average script is a fraction of a second.
- It's not a problem with my script, because the speed varies from time to time and doesn't depend on the number of users or the time of the day.
I've brought it up with support several times now.
The first time I found a spam bot, which was shut down (but then I became inable to see the processes of other users so I don't know if this is still happening.)
The second time they told me there was an error with the monitoring software that was causing the connection to the MySQL server to be slow.
The third time they said the load was too high, but that they were working on it.
The fourth time they offered to move me to a new MySQL server.
The fifth time (they hadn't moved me by now) they got around to moving me.
The sixth time they said the new server they added hadn't been enough to reduce the load, but that new servers were being installed.
The seventh time they looked at my site once, presumably when it was going through a period of not being slow, and told me there was no problem. (Guess I was just imagining it.)
The eighth time they helpfully suggested that the internal server errors might be a client-side problem. Eventually I managed to convince him that there really was a problem and I wasn't just dreaming, and he took the time to check the MySQL server load and found it was too high.
So now it has been 3 days and I'm waiting for him to write back about the recurring server load problem.
I'm a pretty patient guy but this is getting ####ing ridiculous.
My site is just for fun, I've put a lot of work into it, and my money goes towards my uni fees and can't go towards trying every host under the sun (Dreamhost is the third I've tried, the fourth if you count donated hosting).
My site doesn't even get that many users; around 30 in peak times.
Is anyone else experiencing a similar problem? What can I do about this? It seems to be a problem with MySQL server load, but it's making the site I've put all this effort into unusable.
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I'm also talking with support at the moment, they say they've elevated me to level 2 support but that it means that I'm not guaranteed a 24 hour response time.
Possible Bug related to taking a nation that was under civil desorder?
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