How in the heck did I "overload" my server?

[pntnet]

Today I had 14 people visiting my forums. The As soon as the 15th person logged in it shutted down and checking the trouble ticket showed that I was had my Account Suspended for having 30 simultaneous people viewing it.

I'm not even touching 1GB of bandwith a month, how in the world can they shut down my site for having more than 30 people look at it at the same time.

It seems like, the purpose of a web site is to have a number of people visit it, and 30 seems like a very very low number .

[DesignQueue]

Your account is not going to be suspended for having more than 30 people visiting it at the same time. It will get suspended for having more than 30 open database connections which is what can happen when running forum software.

[pntnet]

Ok then, how do I prevent this. I mean my forums are not that big. It was 15 people only on it at the same time, and how could that possible overload a big strong hostrocket server?

[DesignQueue]

Well if the software is designed poorly then one person can end up opening more than one database connection at a time by simply clicking on links in the forum that require transactions with the database. If the software doesn't close those connections in a timely manner after the transaction is complete then even if you have just 15 people logged into the forum you can end up having more than 30 connections open at a time.

[pntnet]

It just seems like 30 would not be enough for all but the tiniest of personal forums.

[spyres]

Just curious. A question for your linux gurus. Is there a way from my shell account that I can check how many open dbase connections I have running at a given time?

[sarahm]

For those of us using OpenBB with the HR setup, how many simultanous users will overload the system?

[BlackDeath]

i wonder if phpBB is that way i need to find out on my home PC in a few months it will tell me how many connections it does

since i got apache, php, mySQL on it :)

[Vormav]

What I'd like to know is how you can monitor the server load in general. You can't base it entirely off connections. Sure, you may have up to 25 connections at one time, but they might only be doing 1 minor little thing each. 5 users on a heavy script will cause a greater server load, and get you booted faster. Is there any good way to monitor that?

[Mr. Popularity]

there's a script called SysInfo, that you can install and it will give you all the server details, memory load, blah blah.. I have it, but I think you can get it from sourceforge

[pntnet]

Mr. Popularity, you're my hero!

Now can you possibly send that script to my email address, or tell me where I might download it?

What i really need is a way to monitor the number of connections that I have open on the database, to see what's really going on with the issue.

On a side note, I think it's wrong to suspend an account for reaching 30 database connections, unless that's some sort of automatic trigger. I mean, sometimes the traffic might spike, and if you look at it overall, the bandwith is under 500 MB for the month usually, so it's not a heavily trafficked site. Again if that's some sort of automatic trigger then i understand, but then people ALSO NEED A WARNING about that when they sign up, that their site might get suspended if 30 people hit it at the same time.

[Mr. Popularity]

I am everyone's hero. I am so popular and loved that they call me Mr. Popularity. I have to beat the chicks off with a stick.. (some men too).. and everybody loves me because I am indeed, a totally awesome Mo-Fo. :P

I'll dig it up and get back to you today :)

Chris

[Stewart]

http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpsysinfo/

[Mr. Popularity]

ahhhh that's it. :) saves me a file transfer :)