Spencer, Next time the web interface hangs, check your spool directory and see if there are a large number of jobs being processed. The way I understand it, and someone correct me if I'm wrong, is that Listserv is single-threaded so if it's busy processing a lage email job, the web interface is going to hang until it finishes the email job. We used to have that exact same problem, especially when lists over a few thousand people started replying like crazy, and one of the things we did to help it was add a SMTP_FORWARD_1= line to the go.user file. Since then the mail is passed off of the listserv machine quicker, and the web interface rarely hangs anymore. -Jim -- Jim Serwinowski [log in to unmask] UB Listserv Administrator http://listserv.acsu.buffalo.edu On Fri, 14 Jun 2002, Warhurst, SI (Spencer) wrote: > Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2002 17:11:01 +0100 > From: "Warhurst, SI (Spencer)" <[log in to unmask]> > Reply-To: LISTSERV give-and-take forum <[log in to unmask]> > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: Web interface performance > > Hi > > Our main JISCmail service currently has about 4400 lists on it. It is a > standalone server, running Windows 2000 Server (recently upgraded from NT4) > and Apache 2 (recently upgraded from 1.3x) on a dual-Xeon 550, with 512Mb > RAM and a hardware RAID5 disk config. > > I am becoming increasingly concerned about the performance of the web > interface. > > At peaks times the web interface has always slowed down a bit, but maybe 1-3 > times a week it would grind to a halt altogether. At these times, when I > looked at the server, I would find that there were 50 wa.exe processes > running (Presumably 50 instances of a process is an NT/W2K or Apache > limit?).. Now, the processor usage would be fine (say not more than 40-50%) > and there would be 100-250Mb of free physical memory. Disk space is not a > problem. What's more, while the web interface had ground to a halt, other > pages not requiring CGI were perfectly navigable. In other words it only > seemed to be the CGI locked up. > > I thought what maybe happening was that as the web interface got a bit > slower at peak time, users would start a process, get impatient, hit their > browser's Stop button, but the process on the server would still be active. > Then they'd try again and cause another wa.exe process to start. Then a > couple of dozen other users would do the same thing and before you know a > jam of processes occured. On some ocassions, to get the web interface going > again, I had to use the NT resource kit's Kill utility to kill all the > wa.exe processes. Not an ideal course of action but it got the web interface > generally working again! > > However, I am still no wiser as to what the *cause* of the problem is and > why it only seems to be affecting CGI. I was rather hoping that upgrading to > Win2k/Apache 2 would help solve the problem. While, in the last 2-3 weeks > since the upgrade, we haven't had a case where the processes have built up > to 50, the web interface still can get very slow to the point where it takes > 5+ minutes to work, or times out. > > We also want to upgrade Listserv to 1.8e, but I am concerned the new > features will exacerbate the problem. Has anyone else here had similar > problems? How do you find performance of the web interface on your servers, > how many lists do you have, what hardware spec etc? > > Thanks > > -- > Spencer Warhurst > Listserv Service Manager > > JISCmail -> http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk > Mailtalk -> http://www.mailtalk.ac.uk > > >