CDRLabs.com

Hi guys, anyone else getting this:

phpBB : Critical Error

Error creating new session


It's happened a few times in the last couple of days. Too many people on at once, I presume...

I've seen it a few times also. It seems to resolve itself within a minute or two when I do encounter it.

By the way, this thread is probably more suited to the "Feedback" forum.

cfitz

Yeah, we know about it. It's a known problem with phpBB. Just too many people using the forum.

The forum's popularity is growing!

I wonder how it was back on Nov 30th when 133 people were logged in at the same time.

cfitz wrote:By the way, this thread is probably more suited to the "Feedback" forum.
cfitz

D'oh! Hey Ian, can you move this please

This seems to be happening ALOT more now. I tried for 2 hours to get on this thing today!

Ian wrote:Yeah, we know about it. It's a known problem with phpBB. Just too many people using the forum.

weird.
first time this happens to me.
when i did manage to log in a minute later, there were only 3 users online (including me)!

Apologies to everyone who has experienced this problem, especially glock20rocks. 2 hours is completely unacceptable

It has more to do with the length of a session. When you sign on, you start up a session, which gets stored in the phpBB session table. To make it fast, it uses the MySQL table type HEAP (table is created in memory). This table is far smaller than the normal MyISAM MySQL table. The default session timeout length is an hour, which means the row will sit in that table for about an hour before it's deleted. SO, we could hit that limit in an hour, even though not that many people are currently logged on. There are also ways to have multiple entries for yourself in the session table... I'm not quite sure how this affects (or is effected by) people who check the "Automatically log me in" box.

We've just implemented a fix for this problem. If this error occurs, it will automatically delete the oldest 50 sessions. If somehow you happen to be 1 of those 50 (walked away for a bit, typing a novel for the forums, etc) all that means is you'll have to log back in again. So I guess if you ARE typing a novel, better copy your post before hitting submit!

If, even after this fix, you get this error repeatedly, and it takes more than 15 minutes to finally get in each time, please let me know, and we'll look into a more aggressive solution.

Socheat

Please don't take this the wrong way, but phpBB can support a board with a lot users. They are running it over at www.vcdhelp.com, and don't seem to be having any troubles even though they have an order of magnitude more users than CDRLabs. Their search function works fine, there aren't any mis-dated posts from upgrades, and I've never experienced the new session error there. So don't give up. It can be done.

cfitz

That is very true, but remember it's not just the software that makes the site run. They could have much better hardware than us, or they may have implemented the phpBB fix I just put in a lot sooner. Or they may have had immediate backups to fix problems that arose, without users even knowing. Who knows. Though, I will say I've gotten this sessions error problem a couple times on the phpBB.com forums a long while ago.

I think the broken CDRLabs forums had a little to do with the fact we upgraded from RC3 straight to 2.0.3, though that's just pure speculation. Perhaps a more incremental approach would've been better, since there were some mighty big changes betwen 2.0.0 RC3 and 2.0.3. But, it was definately our fault (mine, to be exact) that we didn't have a recent backup of the phpBB forums before upgrading. Nothing can be done about the mis-dated posts now, but the search function can, and will, be fixed. Just need to find a little more time to get it done.

Socheat

Okay, thanks. In the meantime I will click a few more ad banners in the hopes of paying for better hardware.

cfitz

error

cfitz wrote:In the meantime I will click a few more ad banners in the hopes of paying for better hardware.

Does any of the banners load up for you guys? All I see is the name of the company and the pic is not available when I select properties.

Yes, they load for me just fine. You don't have ad-filtering software enabled, do you?

cfitz

cfitz wrote:Yes, they load for me just fine. You don't have ad-filtering software enabled, do you?

I don't believe I have any ad-filtering software. As I type this now, I can see some of the banners (like the Marcan one), while others are still "not available". This is the only site I have problems with the banners, so I'm not sure what is up. But I will continue to click on them to help out CDRLabs.

I still think you've got some sort of filtering software running. The symptoms you describe fit perfectly.

Ads like Marcan's are served directly from the cdrlabs domain:

http://www.cdrlabs.com/images/marcan-december.gif

Thus, they would sneak through unsophisticated ad filters.

Meanwhile, ads like those for ULead GIF Animator are served from remote ad servers:

http://www.qksrv.net/click-784928-5675730

These are more easily blocked.

Do you see replacement text that looks like this:

[Ulead GIF Animator]

If so, and putting it together with everything else you've reported, it sure smells like ad-blocking software to me. Does "Proxomitron" sound familiar?

cfitz

cfitz wrote:If so, and putting it together with everything else you've reported, it sure smells like ad-blocking software to me. Does "Proxomitron" sound familiar?

I think you are right about that. While tracing back to the last thing I installed on my computer, I realized that I had installed Kazaa Lite not too long ago. I'm guessing Kazaa Lite probably had some sort of ad blocking software in it like Proxomitron since one of the features of it was spyware/adware blocking. Thanks for the help cfitz.

Kazaa lite shouldn't have anything but Kazaa stripped of all the spyware crap?

Matt wrote:Kazaa lite shouldn't have anything but Kazaa stripped of all the spyware crap?

True, but it might have installed a program to block out ads. I'm not really too sure as I swear I haven't installed any ad blocking software on my computer like Proxomitron.