Geeklog Forums

This morning I had a surge in traffic and the site basically crashed at the server level. I got on the phone to tech support with the host of my server, and checking MySQL activity, GUS was the culprit. It couldn't keep up, got stuck, and was crashing the server. Not good, especially when I'm getting a buttload of traffic.

I'm running GL 1.4.1 and the last version of GUS I can find is 1.7 which was for GL 1.3.11

I like the GUS plugin because I can run a block which tells me how many people are on the site at any given time. I would like to keep that functionality, either with GUS or some other program or function.

So my question is - Is there a more recent version of GUS which is tweaked to run with GL 1.4.1 or later? Lacking that and assuming no one is updating or working on GUS anymore, is there some other internal stat program or plugin I can run which will give me the same functionality? Thanks.

Don
www.panama-guide.com

How much traffic are we talking about here (max users online at a given moment and total users in a day) and what is your server setup?

The latest version of GUS is 1.7

Geeklog does come with a Who's Online block as well which just shows users who are logged in and how many are online at a given moment.

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One of the Geeklog Core Developers.

Regarding traffic: On a normal day I get about 6,000 visitors and deliver about 70,000 page views, using up about 7 GB of bandwidth per day. It's not normally a problem and GUS has been running for a long time with no problems, however today the site basically crashed and a check of pending activity on the server revealed that GUS was the culprit. I had a spike this morning that basically doubled my normal traffic (up to about 140 on the site at a time) and that's when GUS gagged, which is bad. I don't want anything running that's going to crash my site when I get a traffic spike. For me, traffic = food.

As soon as I disabled the GUS plugin, all server activity returned to normal. Or rather, it would be better to say that when all of the pending MySQL requests generated by GUS were killed.then the server returned to normal (better than ever) activity. It's been snap, crackle, and pop all day, after I killed GUS. There was no need to restart the server or any of the services that were running.

Regarding server setup -

Processor #1 Vendor: AuthenticAMD
Processor #1 Name: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
Processor #1 speed: 2000.067 MHz
Processor #1 cache size: 512 KB

Processor #2 Vendor: AuthenticAMD
Processor #2 Name: AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+
Processor #2 speed: 2000.067 MHz
Processor #2 cache size: 512 KB

Memory: 2056144k/2079680k available (1914k kernel code, 22588k reserved, 770k data, 192k init, 1162176k highmem)

I know about the Who's Online block, but GUS gives you much more information, like how many unique visitors have been on the site that day, how many pages have been delivered that day, top referrers (Google, Yahoo, or whatever), and stuff like that. Much better level of detail. I've gotten used to looking at it, and basically I want it back. I was hoping there would be an updated version of GUS that was tweaked for GL 1.4.1 or above. Right now in the plugin admin section it says GUS was written to be compatible with GL 1.3.11 so I'm assuming that difference might be causing my problem.

Does anyone have a suggested solution? Are there any other plugins that do the same or better job than GUS? Is there any chance of someone updating GUS? At this point, I'm basically afraid to turn it back on. I've had intermittent problems of a similar nature in the past, and I suspect the problem has been GUS the whole time.

Don
www.panama-guide.com

I agree on the value of the GUS's Who is Online block, that is why I use it too.

Do you periodicly clean out the gus tables? If you don't you should as they collect a lot of data fast. I clean mine out weekly, if I don't then my reports always time out.

You should maybe also analyze and repair your GUS tables in the geeklog database to see if that helps.

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One of the Geeklog Core Developers.

Hello Don,

If most people only use the block stats, we could think about making a mini gus or a big who's online block (max users online at a given moment and total users in a day, how many pages have been delivered that day, top referrers (Google, Yahoo, or whatever)).

It could be a bounty or a sponsoring issue (feature request).

::Ben

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I'm available to customise your themes or plugins for your Geeklog CMS

No, I have not cleaned out the GUS tables. I don't know if I ever have. And frankly, I don't have the time to mess with a piece of software or plugin that requires me to do something like that regularly and routinely. I think it should work forever with no further messing around from me. Anyway, thanks for the tip.

Don
www.panama-guide.com

Sure, absolutely.

In reality, the GUS plugin is really little more than the Who's Online block on steroids. Why not take the basis of the GUS script, it's primary concept and ideas, and integrate that into the basic GL software? So far from the feedback I've heard, many people like the information GUS provides. It's useful and valuable, and it's a big improvement over what the standard GL software ships with. So, I would support the idea of integrating that functionality into the main package.

However, I also know that means "bureaucracy" and time and effort. Therefore, we might see a solution delivered in six months or a year, if it ever happens.

Who wrote the original GUS software, anyway? Are they still around? Is that person or people willing or able to work on an upgrade, improvement, or repair?

Don
www.panama-guide.com

I'm using GUS from glfusion on my GL1.4.1 site.
Plugin Name: gus
Plugin Homepage: http://www.glfusion.org
Installed Version: 2.0.0.fusion
Code Version: 2.0.0
Geeklog Version: 1.1.0

There were some glfusion checks in the code I had to remove, don't remember exactly but it still works.

-s

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FlashYourWeb and Your Gallery with the E2 XML Media Player for Gallery2 - http://www.flashyourweb.com

I'll check it out. Thanks.

Don
www.panama-guide.com

I like this idea.

::Ben

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I'm available to customise your themes or plugins for your Geeklog CMS

Since GUS has not been updated since GL 1.3.11 and the latest version is now about two years old, it would be nice if the best of the functionality of GUS could be adopted for current and future versions of GL.

By the way, in order to carry on I checked, repaired, and flushed all of the MySQL GUS tables and turned the plugin back on. It seems to be working alright, for now. However, I'm still a little leery of it at this point, I basically don't trust it, and I'm afraid it will crash my server again.

Don
www.panama-guide.com

Looks like I am now having GUS issues.

I just upgraded my web servers hardware and software and now I am seeing 500 - Internal server error being reported about 1 every 5 to 10 minutes.

My old machine was WIndows Server 2003 with IIS 6 and PHP 5 something.

My new machine has Windows Server 2008 with IIS 7 and the latest version of PHP.

I have disabled GUS and I haven't seen an error in over an hour now.

Looks like I will have to take a closer look at what is causing this...

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One of the Geeklog Core Developers.

GUS is causing it. I started having problems again this week, and when I checked the error log it was GUS causing SQL errors. I disabled GUS and the problems went away, again.

Either this plugin needs to be updated, or it should be pulled from the downloads section.

Don

I don't think GUS should be pullled as it works on most servers.

I am going to be looking into the issues I have been having and hopfully coming out with a fix.

I don't have and sql errors reported from gus, what are yours?

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One of the Geeklog Core Developers.

It was mostly just people who were surfing the site with the Chrome browser - they got a simple message saying "An SQL Error Has Occurred" and no website. Meanwhile, the site worked fine for anyone else using a different browser.

To be honest I didn't look all that hard at the error log. I just saw that the crashes were being caused by GUS and I killed it immediately. As soon as I did, the problems went away.

I've got it around here somewhere in the error log, right next to that half-eaten donut...

Don