Hi everyone! For once I am not posting to forewarn you about some calamity about to befall Subeta. I thought I should explain some of the problems that we're currently having. If you're not interested, you will lose nothing by not reading, so don't worry about it :)

SQLs: There are actually 3 causes for SQLs, and you can tell them apart by the timing. The main cause for SQLs is when the database locks up because of too many queries at once. Those SQLs result in the site starting to time out, before our script realizes the problem and restarts the database, resulting in a SQL page for about 40-60 seconds before the site comes back up. This type of SQL will be made extinct (hehe) as we work to improve the efficiency of the site.

The other two are more worrying. One is a "quick" SQL, which shows up suddenly, without the site slowing down, and disappears within 15 seconds or so. This means that the database has crashed (and automatically restarted), which is usually a result of some part of the DB having become corrupted. Eventually, the server will crash immediately after it restarts itself, and this will cause a long SQL, which will persist until we're able to restore the database from a backup.

We're currently working on this problem and we think we are close to discovering what is actually going on here.

Images not showing: One of our three web servers was having problems, becoming unresponsive and having to be restarted every night. When this happened, the image server on it had to be started manually, and so images that were routed to that server would not load until this happened. We've since identified what was happening (runaway backup script) and fixed it, so this shouldn't be an issue any more.

Please-wait timeouts: A number of people are reporting getting "please wait 30 seconds" or such timeouts when it's they've waited minutes, hours, or days. We are still trying to figure out this one, so if you're having this problem and you're willing to work with me on debugging it, please let me know.

Anyway, just thought that might help explain some things that are going on.

-Alex