508 Resource Limit Reached

[Snowdog]

I'm not sure what the cause of my getting the '508 Resource Limit Reached' error, but it is increasingly happening. When I first started getting it a few months ago, it was intermittent and a simple refresh would load the desired page.

Of late, as in the last few weeks, it has been every other time, and sometimes it takes two or three refreshes to load a page.

Today, it's taking five or six refreshes to load, and in my opening this new thread, it took nine refreshes. I'm sorry, but after 25 years of enjoying Barrow Downs, I'm afraid it has pretty much become unusable to me.

I know there has been bot attacks in the past, but my last check was one registered user (me) and 4 guests, so I'm not sure where the resource loading is coming from. Any ideas what is going on?

[Snowdog]

It took ten refreshes to get this thread to post on the eleventh attempt.

[Huinesoron]

I've certainly assumed it was the "guests" (bots and/or crawlers) causing the issue. Right now there are ~4800 guests on the Downs, plus me; typically over the past few weeks this has been 6000+.

Based on the "Viewing" stats on the front page, ~1100 of those are just sitting on the front page. 1800 are squatting in Mirth, almost 1000 in Novices & Newcomers, and the rest are scattered across 9 or so other sub-forums, with no more than 300 in each.

There doesn't seem to be any pattern to which threads (if any!) they are squatting in; a look at Mirth shows that bigger threads have more views, but with no obvious spikes; I've just graphed the posts/views for a page of Mirth and it's pretty much a straight line.

I agree it's becoming unusable; I don't know what can be done about it.

hS

[Galadriel55]

Ditto. Usually it only took a couple refreshes, it's a minor annoyance. But in the last few days it's been so bad that I gave up on trying to open the site.

Interestingly, on my observation it's not very consistent with the number of guests. For instance, right now it's bad and there are 7K. But earlier this morning it was even worse to the point that I quit, but there were only 4K. I mean, 4K is still a lot, but the site doesn't function twice as well with half the number of "guests".

Equally clueless as to how to fix it, but willing to pitch in and help with whatever solution.


Edit: it's not just loading the page either that's the issue. The whole site is slow. Avatars aren't loading, posts take ages to load, it's slow as heck.

[Galadriel55]

...And just as quickly as it came, the flood is gone. Site is perfectly usable, not a single error. Guests are at 4K.

[Galadriel55]

And again, just to illustrate. Guests are over 5K, I've been browsing through the site quite a bit today, and no trouble at all.

I wonder if we should post here with observations to keep track of how much the "guest" numbers correlate to errors and slowness?

[Snowdog]

Took me a dozen refreshes to get the forum to load; a dozen refreshes to open this thread, and only four refreshes to get a reply box to open. Probably will be several to post.

I check in less and less because there doesn't seem to be a point wasting limited surfing time trying to get in here and doing anything. Glad some people are able to work it.

[Galadriel55]

Took me a dozen refreshes to get the forum to load; a dozen refreshes to open this thread, and only four refreshes to get a reply box to open. Probably will be several to post.

I check in less and less because there doesn't seem to be a point wasting limited surfing time trying to get in here and doing anything. Glad some people are able to work it.

Wonder if you just always get super unlucky with the high "guest" waves. For me, the bad times come and go, for the most part the forum is still usable. It's sad if for you it's consistently error-ridden.

For the analysts: I logged on a couple more times with 4K and 5K without issues. Right now I had a single error requiring just one refresh, and the guest number is at 5.9K.

[Galadriel55]

Yesterday (approx. 10h ago for timestamp) it was absolutely horrible. I was not able to enter the site at all. Tried several times over the course of that hour, each time even 20+ refreshes got me nowhere. Thus, no idea how many guests we had, but it did not beat our current record of 8.6K from June 5.

This morning - down to 3K and smooth as butter.

[Morthoron]

I've been getting:

Resource Limit Is Reached

The website is temporarily unable to service your request as it exceeded resource limit. Please try again later.

On and off for at least a year, perhaps more. It seems to be an intermittent occurrence. Today was particularly nasty, and I had to refresh numerous times. Which is egregious to me, for as many of you know I utterly lack patience.

[Galadriel55]

Since my last post I haven't seen any major issues. Numbers have mostly stayed at 3K. A couple times, like just now, I would need a single refresh - that's when the numbers go into 4K.

So far, actually quite accurately in keeping with Hui's estimate of 6K being the critical number. Though when the site is really inaccessible, can't see what the numbers are.

On a different note... The tidal wave seems to have passed for now at least. So long as it remains a temporary and infrequent occurrence... Would be interesting to know what's behind the influx.

[Snowdog]

It seems to be back to every other click for me.

[Galadriel55]

For the longest time now guests have been at 3-4K and I have had minimal instances of errors. Then today I had to refresh several times with most clicks, and lo and behold we are over 6K.

I doubted at first, but I am forced to conclude after careful observation that Hui's proposed 6K threshold is indeed very accurate.

Dunno how to prevent it - but at least it seems to be a very temporary thing as the guests ebb and flow on their own accord.