MetaFilter Slooooow?

August 7, 2008 2:19 PM

Anyone else having intermittently 'freezes' while loading, or generally slow behavior?

"My Internet" works fine, it's just Metafilter that's doing it, and it's intermittent. And I haven't noticed it before yesterday.

Often it loads just fine, but every now and then, it'll "sit there" for 10+ seconds without doing anything, and then it rapidly loads. Earlier today I got a page that only loaded halfway. Last night, submitting a comment, a ColdFusion error got spit out about "the resource" being unavailable. (Presumably an SQL backend.) Submitting a comment or post is often extremely slow.

As I said, though, every other site I've tried loads just fine during those times, so I'm thinking it's MeFi itself. A quick test from Alertra has it showing most stuff OK, but is Chicago and Oklahoma City nodes throw an error. I can ping the site just fine.

(The status pages don't show anything wrong.)

Tangentially related: is this page still right, that two servers run the whole site, still accurate?

posted by fogster to Uptime at 2:19 PM (30 comments total)

Of course, as soon as I hit Post, everything started working fine...
posted by fogster at 2:22 PM on August 7, 2008

It's running fine for me. If you're getting a CF error you may want to send it our way if it looks like anything other than a simple timeout. Check greasemonkey too just to make sure you don't have something doing anything scripty with the site and keep an eye on the status bar of your browser to see if anything in particular is loading slowly. When you load a page like Recent Activity, is it slow just like the rest of the site? Could you load the site while logged out and see if there's a difference in load times?
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 2:29 PM on August 7, 2008

Actually, I did just get an oddball error a few minutes ago when reloading the "recent comments" portion of WCityMike's apology thread. It hung up and there was some weird text at the bottom of the page. I didn't print it out or anything, but I do remember it mentioning "the resource" as well.
posted by yhbc at 2:33 PM on August 7, 2008

"The resource" was what was in Marcellus Wallace's briefcase.
posted by BeerFilter at 3:08 PM on August 7, 2008

I have occasionally had the MeFi server stop responding, usually to come back in a couple of minutes. It's been happening recently -- but that's because it's always been like that. I haven't noticed any change.
posted by Class Goat at 3:17 PM on August 7, 2008

I get a hiccup now and then, and noticed one earlier. The server has been set up to detect and auto-bootstrap if things go south—I don't know if that's even happened to day, but it generally keeps the downtime to a minimum when things do get grindy.
posted by cortex (staff) at 3:19 PM on August 7, 2008

So far I've had the comments in WCityMike's thread below freeze up when I've hit "back" after clicking someone's profile. Both times it's been in the same spot, about 10-12 comments down, and not at all where I was in the thread when I clicked a name. Weird.
posted by justonegirl at 3:37 PM on August 7, 2008

Is it freeing when trying to get data from fmpub.net? I have that problem too.
posted by gjc at 4:00 PM on August 7, 2008

Yeah I get it sometimes when the browser is connecting to fmpub, and (I think) google analytics. Some days are pretty bad, but usually it's ok. I've seen this on many sites, and often wonder if there's a way to configure things so those connections don't stop the whole page.
posted by Fuzzy Skinner at 4:56 PM on August 7, 2008

Fuzzy Skinner writes: Yeah I get it sometimes when the browser is connecting to fmpub, and (I think) google analytics. Some days are pretty bad, but usually it's ok. I've seen this on many sites, and often wonder if there's a way to configure things so those connections don't stop the whole page.


Well, you could use HOSTS to block those servers. It should not only stop the freezes but also save you the bandwidth.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:30 PM on August 7, 2008

Regardings using HOSTS, I believe most HOSTS files already block various Google services (Ads, Analytics). I'm not sure about fmpub.net but if you don't find the domain name in your HOSTS file (search for fmpub.net), just add the following line to the end of your hosts file:
127.0.0.1 static.fmpub.net

All you need to do is to restart your browser, sometimes even computer. If the banners don't show up, it's working.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 5:39 PM on August 7, 2008

Is it just today? I know MeFi's probably getting a ton of traffic because of this article that's all over Reddit and Digg at the moment.
posted by Ugh at 6:15 PM on August 7, 2008

I bet it's fmpub, too. Adblocking drastically improved my MeFi experience on that front. Thing is, I wouldn't block the ad if they didn't make me wait for it. I don't mind looking at ads that support sites I believe in, as long as they're not punching me in the dick eyes. Any chance we could get ads from a company that, you know, knows what it's doing?
posted by middleclasstool at 6:24 PM on August 7, 2008

MetaFilter's working okay for me, but I can't get "this article that's all over Reddit and Digg" to load.

Can someone fill me in on what the article is about?
posted by marsha56 at 6:31 PM on August 7, 2008

google cache.
posted by jessamyn (staff) at 6:40 PM on August 7, 2008

Yeah, it hangs while waiting for fmpub for me, too.
posted by Wolof at 7:02 PM on August 7, 2008

It's been generally running/loading slow all day.
posted by fixedgear at 7:11 PM on August 7, 2008

I've noticed slowness today as well; doesn't seem to be fmpub.
posted by danb at 7:35 PM on August 7, 2008

I can't find any references to the article on Digg; it's active comments-wise on Reddit but hardly "all over" it, either. Something like 21 net votes so far? Probably not crushing.
posted by cortex (staff) at 7:47 PM on August 7, 2008

Yeah the Medomains seem a little slow to load for me too, but I just assumed it was Comcast throttling. Didn't know about the digred sucks thing.
posted by Toekneesan at 7:48 PM on August 7, 2008

Slow for me today.
MeFi: Weighed down by apologies.
posted by lukemeister at 7:49 PM on August 7, 2008

Just took me about five minutes to make three clicks within the site.
posted by The Straightener at 7:55 PM on August 7, 2008

Hm, I gotta say I was looking for more out of that article than "membership fee", which we already knew. But close enough. This is the dude that wrote it btw.

Oh also, the site had some hiccups for me earlier today but nothing major. I already had fmpub and google analytics blocked.
posted by puke & cry at 8:02 PM on August 7, 2008

I believe most HOSTS files already block various Google services

most hosts files have one entry: 127.0.0.1 localhost
posted by quonsar at 9:05 PM on August 7, 2008 [1 favorite]

and perhaps an entry for IPv6: "::1 localhost"
posted by blasdelf at 9:32 PM on August 7, 2008

The 'Recent Activity' page always makes that little spinning beach ball appear and hangs my browser for several seconds. It's almost enough to make me stop continuously re-loading that page every several seconds.
posted by GuyZero at 9:58 PM on August 7, 2008

Thanks for the link Jess!
posted by marsha56 at 10:26 PM on August 7, 2008

A quick note: I have those adverttag blocks in place, and have for a while, but today (just before I successfully posted to Music, so you can get the timestamp there) music slowed to a crawl, with only a few posts loading, and no sidebar, hanging that way indefinitely. Status bar showed it was loading from the mefi domain. This persisted for several minutes, then cleared up.
posted by davejay at 10:55 PM on August 7, 2008

Why would the Reddit and Digg vs. Metafilter article be driving more traffic today than usual? Isn't it from October of last year?
posted by quin at 7:38 AM on August 8, 2008

i could be wrong, but i'd guess that metafilter gets its hosting from The Planet. Another site i frequent died for me for 20 minutes last night, along with metafilter. they were the only 2 sites i couldn't reach and they both died at the same point in the traceroute. when the other page i go to came back up there was a posting that the host was having problems with dropping packets or somesuch.
posted by nadawi at 9:34 PM on August 8, 2008