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I downloaded a nice tool to check on my MySQL Performance on my new dedicated virtual server. Unfortunately it explains very well my memory outages right from the start (I am running Linux,  Apache , MySQL , PHP , WordPress MU and BuddyPress on this site as well as some self-written integrated code with a seperate innodb database)

——– Storage Engine Statistics ——————————————-
[--] Status: -Archive -BDB -Federated +InnoDB -ISAM -NDBCluster
[--] Data in MyISAM tables: 13M (Tables: 417)
[--] Data in InnoDB tables: 4M (Tables: 127)
[!!] Total fragmented tables: 11

——– Performance Metrics ————————————————-
[--] Up for: 6h 6m 52s (2M q [103.354 qps], 89K conn, TX: 1B, RX: 244M)
[--] Reads / Writes: 67% / 33%
[--] Total buffers: 30.0M global + 8.2M per thread (200 max threads)
[!!] Maximum possible memory usage: 1.6G (186% of installed RAM)
[OK] Slow queries: 0% (0/2M)
[OK] Highest usage of available connections: 9% (19/200)
[OK] Key buffer size / total MyISAM indexes: 3.0M/4.4M
[OK] Key buffer hit rate: 100.0% (46M cached / 14K reads)
[OK] Query cache efficiency: 94.4% (1M cached / 1M selects)
[!!] Query cache prunes per day: 73588
[OK] Sorts requiring temporary tables: 0% (0 temp sorts / 13K sorts)
[!!] Temporary tables created on disk: 38% (15K on disk / 40K total)
[OK] Thread cache hit rate: 92% (6K created / 89K connections)
[!!] Table cache hit rate: 1% (132 open / 8K opened)
[OK] Open file limit used: 21% (221/1K)
[OK] Table locks acquired immediately: 99% (152K immediate / 152K locks)
[!!] InnoDB data size / buffer pool: 4.3M/2.0M

——– Recommendations —————————————————–
General recommendations:
Run OPTIMIZE TABLE to defragment tables for better performance
    MySQL started within last 24 hours – recommendations may be inaccurate
    Reduce your overall MySQL memory footprint for system stability
    Enable the slow query log to troubleshoot bad queries
    When making adjustments, make tmp_table_size/max_heap_table_size equal
    Reduce your SELECT DISTINCT queries without LIMIT clauses
    Increase table_cache gradually to avoid file descriptor limits
Variables to adjust:
  *** MySQL’s maximum memory usage is dangerously high ***
  *** Add RAM before increasing MySQL buffer variables ***
    query_cache_size (> 8M)
    tmp_table_size (> 64M)
    max_heap_table_size (> 16M)
    table_cache (> 132)
    innodb_buffer_pool_size (>= 4M)

I think this thing tells me to buy a server with a minimum of 2 gig I could however try some optimizations first. So I need to dive in optimizing MySQL 5 , and in the worst case I will have to check If I can install something like another webserver/proxy like nginx .

My Current /etc/my.cnf however:

[mysqld]
query-cache-type = 1
query-cache-size = 8M
set-variable = table_cache=132
tmp_table_size = 64M
max_allowed_packet=16M
set-variable = max_connections=200
set-variable= key_buffer_size=3M
set-variable = read_buffer_size=2M
set-variable = join_buffer_size=2M
set-variable = sort_buffer_size=2M
set-variable = read_rnd_buffer_size=2M
set-variable = query_cache_limit=4M
thread-cache-size = 4
set-variable=local-infile=0
datadir=/var/lib/mysql
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock
user=mysql
old_passwords=1
skip-bdb
set-variable = innodb_buffer_pool_size=2M
set-variable = innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=500K
set-variable = innodb_log_buffer_size=500K
set-variable = innodb_thread_concurrency=2
[mysqld_safe]
log-error=/var/log/mysqld.log
pid-file=/var/run/mysqld/mysqld.pid
skip-bdb
set-variable = innodb_buffer_pool_size=2M
set-variable = innodb_additional_mem_pool_size=500K
set-variable = innodb_log_buffer_size=500K
set-variable = innodb_thread_concurrency=2

Let’s see… first of all, I have no clue where to start except for intuition I need to read-up a lot here. I’m no MySQL expert at all.

1) I could start trying to convert my innodb database to a myisam storage engine based db , I really wanted those handy foreign key relations to work more beautiful but hey.. if they cost extra resources if I only need to reserve buffers for one storage engine, worth a try. update: took me some rewriting "create your own foreign key workaround" and thanks to my brilliant written mysqldump to where-ever update script… I can now edit my.cnf and delete the innodb entries … I think? file readonly su –l, vi my.cnf, so i now can throw away the innodb stuff and do skip-innodb, /etc/init.d/mysqld restart (away are the stats again )

2) While I’m looking at MySQL I have to take into account other performance factors and it is pretty urgent when I look at the main desktop of the server: SLIK! There are real users on the site and this is not nice.

3) When I now go to my Server Overview I get:

So what does this mean? I open the file and I have no clue what to do here. so… I Google … OOPS … I suddenly realize that PLESK itself is running under innodb, I forgot that is also using the MySQL database. Ok…sigh.. revert …. restart mysql, and we are here again.

…..

Well.. it looks like my first priorities are BOTH CPU and Memory. They are now almost against their very upper limit and of course it jumps up and down (hard to make a screenshot) with only apache processes basically taking the cpu.

I did use sar etc.. before but on the other hand… I already know enough.

The first thing i did now was install the wp super cache plugin. It makes the site go faster but… it does not (yet?) seem to have an impact on load. I also had to adjust the etc/hosts for the wp-cron to function but… that caused… http://wiki.apache.org/httpd/InternalDummyConnection which i have not yet solved and probably produces extra load.

sigh… too much load lol

FarmVille is a game by the company Zynga mostly played on social networks like Facebook. The objective is to run a farm.

http://farmvillechicken.com :

A community in which users can create FarmVille blogs of their own and earn money by revenue sharing so they can earn Farm Cash. One of these weblogs: http://almanac.farmvillechicken.com with about any statistical reports on FarmVille. (this new url is live since only a few days so there are no ranking yet).

Users can also chat, create or join groups, join forums, setup wikis on all kinds of FarmVille (e.g. about a "horse stable "), chat with a handy chat bar beneath, befriend others and create a FarmVille profile that shows their level and achievements, so that their profile link can be used in other FarmVille newsgroups.

Daar ben ik toch benieuwd naar al lezende in Popular Science uit 1930 .

"In the face of increasing highway congestion.. popular science monthly presents here a definitive working plan to solve the problem".

Files zijn trouwens wel interessant al Google-nde daarop. Ik lees op File maat:

Files vormen een barometer voor de economie in het land: Hoe beter de economie, hoe meer files. Maar bij teveel files (lees reistijdverlies), zal de economie vanzelf weer een lager niveau opzoeken. Nedeland is in oktober 2001 van de derde plaats naar de achtste plaats teruggevallen van de landen met een gunstig bedrijfsklimaat.

en

Het is een beetje verdrietig te merken dat enkele items uit het deel "Wat vooral niet te doen!" door politieke partijen in hun laatste verkiezingsprogramma’s waren opgenomen.

Ik wordt soms helemaal gek in de file. Maar het is goed om te weten dat het al 80 jaar mensen gek maakt. Evenals … bonnen voor te hard rijden:

I spend some time browsing through the 137 years of PopSci Archive .

And its amazing but somehow some diy articles from 1928 could be publised just as well on websites or magazines today.

Like… we are reading apparently already for over 80 years articles on "How to Take better Photos" (this article is from 1931) "if you look what do you see…your eyes and thus register on the cells in your brain"

p.s. If you want to have a wider screen, then just head over to Google Books .

Just some of the things I read:

	How many times have we, electronics users, thought the same thing.. shall I wait for the next big thing coming or shall I buy my new device today? No difference between now and then, even the graphs seem the same although they are probably not created with Microsoft Excel. An article explaining us to buy or not to buy .
	It seems that in 1931 being Fascist was cool around New York, 9 years before the war. Ingram’s shaving gel even make Il Duce the example of using their cool cool shaving gel. Really amazing how they looked at things before the big war unless of course this is some kind of humor that I don’t get.
	Do you think that the battle between Science And Creationism is new in the U.S.A.? That Richard Dawkins says new things? Think again:
	Where I can read again that the Dutch do not recognize great inventions of the future: a plane with a machine gun , which made Fokker later an icon in the Netherlands (after the Germans bought it to fight "Roland Garros"-es).
	Pretty cool idea: an answering machine ("Robot answers phone and take message ") (1931)
	We now have internet bars where you can rent a computer for an hour, back then you could hire a typewriter by inserting a coin

I thought… let´s try to improve the performance of my weblogs. So I installed wp super cache. This is what happened to my GPU usage:

I noticed this earlier also when I installed it on my Dreamhost Private Server. A real peek in memory and/or cpu usage on the server. (this graph however is from MediaTemple)

You won’t believe it but this costs me actually $90 this month extra in over usage of the server AND it did not really make things faster. Well.. at the beginning it did but after a while things become very slow.

So probably I am doing something wrong here, since I actually wanted to bring this graph down not up

So let’s first de-activate wp-super-cache to test if the graph goes down again and then try to study what I can do to not make this happen with this caching plugin.

I read this and maybe it has something todo with it

After three years of trying to get answers on the WordPress forums I think I can conclude that posting there is somewhat like talking to yourself. Here are pretty much all the threads I started the last 3 years and the amount of answers ….:

(so my question is: is there actually anywhere on the web a WordPress forum where users interact or reply if you are looking for help?)

("yes you know and the cool thing about Open Source is that there are forums where people will help you "the community" instead of the easy calling to a helpdesk who will resolve your problem immediately because they are paid to resolve your problem and you really don’t have the time to spend nights solving it because they are full time employed solving problems. So yeah you will spend days and nights searching for an answer but hey that is the cool thing, the learning experience")

Then again… changing code myself would probably also not fall under any software support contract of a paid software product.

So… I am really wondering, is it just so that with WordPress problems it’s like "you are on your own" or am I missing those forums where the real interaction is taking place? Or is the only route to pay someone with same skills as myself to go find the solution?

Link to my Problem	Date Posted	Amount of Replies / Help
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/347497?replies=2   (PHP execution limit)	3 jan 2010	none, have not found solution yet  solved this one myself very strange: as soon as HR tags are used with php-exec pages then it fails. see also here .
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/347731?replies=1 (undefined pages, tags)	3 jan 2010	none, have not found solution yet solved this one myself also. Very strange also. There were 4 hidden divs not viewable when viewing page source but only by viewing the DOM directly. It turned out they were generated by an add-on on the dhtml menu i use…
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/347412?replies=2 (XMLRPC escaping)	2 jan 2010	none, close to solution myself
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/321125?replies=6 (stat)	2 months ago	2, no solution, I deinstalled the plugin completely
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/300127?replies=2 (query var)	4 months ago	none, solved it myself
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/298811?replies=1 (weird ss)	4 months ago	none, solved it (maybe)
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/281884?replies=9 (str_split in P2)	6 months ago	8 replies  GOOD!, it will be solved … any day now in the next release of p2
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/279705?replies=1 (query_posts)	6 months ago	none, I still dont know the solution
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/279569?replies=2 (idem query posts)	6 months ago	none, I still dont know the solution
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/277718?replies=1 (stealth plugin)	6 months ago	none, deinstalled it
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/232386?replies=1 (hierarchical comments)	11 months ago	none, found it, really easy problem: forget some tags in the template
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/221453?replies=2 (show all tags)	1 year ago	none, 1 person is asking the same, I solved this myself
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/219430?replies=15 (no template page)	1 year ago	several replies, but I solved it myself, others picked it up
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/216837?replies=2 (maximum length of url)	1 year ago	1 reply but still no answer to why 175 characters seems to be the limit
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/216286?replies=2 (tags/tagcloud)	1 year ago	none, made code myself and posted it
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/215175?replies=2 (remove string from tags)	1 year ago	none, made code myself and posted it
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/214690?replies=3 (types of relationships in taxonomy)	1 year ago	1 reply/question, still no answer
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/211065?replies=5 (tag of current page)	1 year ago	none, pretty sad in 5 replies of myself I find it myself
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/209608?replies=6 (tag bug)	1 year ago	several replies, I found a bug in 2.7 which was entered in trac
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/174834?replies=4 (pagebar)	1 year ago	replies from author, i think it is solved
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/167192?replies=2 (tag in rss feed)	1 year ago	1 reply, but didnt help, I cant remember if I fixed it.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/166546?replies=6 (widgets problem)	1 year ago	some replies that suggest the same problem, it was a problem in some wp release". no replies however on solving it, solved itself.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/160996?replies=4 (WLW problem)	1 year ago	replies but asking me for the solution, I found the problem myself
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/155467?replies=1 (tag pages)	1 year ago	none, build a whole system myself
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/143356?replies=5 (why count field)	2 years ago	several replies, with the answer!
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/128099?replies=3 (default editor)	2 years ago	1 reply with the same question, no answer
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/142825?replies=3 (>7mb export)	2 years ago	none, took my quite some time to write code myself for this
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/121606?replies=2 (kmz file)	2 years ago	none, found the solution myself
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/116207?replies=3 (comments not appearing)	2 years ago	1 reply, after I fixed it.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/107130?replies=1 (export not working)	2 years ago	none, see above took me some time to fix
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/85806?replies=7 (some cache error)	3 years ago	some replies, but none that worked

Elk jaar koop ik op het allerlaatste moment mijn vuurwerk in. Dit jaar besloot ik het maar van te voren te bestellen en bovendien iets rustiger aan te doen met de uitgaven aan vuurwerk want tsja.. je steekt het aan, kijkt ernaar en een paar seconden later *poef* weg geld. Dus dit jaar maar een crisis vuurwerk budget:

Ik heb de volgende zaken gekocht om bij Ray in de wijk af te schieten:

	Salvo Cabs € 40 Duur effect: 75 seconden Hoogte effect: 20 – 25 meter MAXIMUM POWDER! Grof gevuld met kruid. Voeg 5022 en 5076 bij elkaar en vul hem af op 500 GRAM en je hebt de Salvo Cabs. Maar dan in een nummer 1 uitvoering met verbazingwekkende effecten! Nu al artikel van het jaar uitgeroepen op diverse vuuurwerkshows en op alle websites! Absoluut geen geld voor deze kwaliteit. Zie hier voor een filmpje!
	Big, Bigger, Biggest € 99,50 Duur effect: 90 seconden Hoogte effect: 20 – 25 meter The biggest cake of all! Een knaller van een eyecatcher met zijn grote snelle effecten van zeeblauwe, gouden, zilveren, rode en groene boeketten Zie hier voor filmpje!
	GBV 15 Meterpakket € 20 Eindelijk weer een echte meter met echte vuurpijlen, romeinse kaarsen, ratelband, fonteinen enz….
	ProLine POT € 27,50

2010 here we come!

One of the artists I invested parts in on Sellaband is Cecile Morel.

SellaBand is based in Amsterdam, the creative capital of Europe. Since its launch in August 2006, SellaBand has coordinated recording sessions for 37 artists or acts who had their albums funded by their fans.

Over $3,000,000 has been invested in independent bands via www.sellaband.com. With SellaBand, artists retain complete ownership of the works created and have the flexibility to determine which incentives they will offer their fans who fund them.

SellaBand’s fan funding engine also allows artists the freedom to enter into deals with any label, management company, or publisher and there are no advances to pay back. Artists maintain control over their career and have 100% freedom to create the music that they want to create.

On the second day of Christmas a nice surprise was found in my mailbox: the song All the Lights especially for Christmas.

More songs of her are found on the Sellaband page of Cecile (go there to listen to some songs). PLEASE consider buying a part ($10) (like I did) of this artist and you will receive the CD for free when she reaches the $50.000 milestone to record a new CD.