Site Slowness Resolved

For the last few days (on or after the 22nd), you may have noticed a significant slow-down with CrazedSanity.com.  All the other domains, such as BuzzKill.org or the CS-Project site, all worked just fine.

The reason for this was due to a configuration problem.  I was fixing a problem remotely which required a change in the main configuration file: normally I remember to make the appropriate changes before making it live, but it seems I had forgotten the last time.  This caused the server to have to do a lot of extra lookups that caused latencies of around 10 seconds (normally the site serves up in less than 1-2).

I've implemented some very minor page logging that will help me track page latencies: I now track the time of the request vs. the time the page finishes loading (which is just after the logging happens).  Hopefully this can help me track down a few other problems as well.  The logging appears to make zero discernible difference to the site's overall performance, so I believe I'll leave it  permanently, though the logging system will probably be overhauled to make that process easier.

Planned Upgrade

In the coming weeks I will be working on building a new (donated) server for CrazedSanity.com..  It should provide much more horsepower with its faster processor and much more RAM.  The current site is running on a 600Mhz PIII with a 256M of RAM (yeah, I know thats kinda pathetic, but Linux makes that count for a hell of a lot more).  The new server will be running on a 2Ghz Celeron with ~480M of RAM (which may be upgraded before the final move).  It's not a massively powerful server, but it is more powerful than Charybdis (the current server), and let's not forget that it was donated.