Question about errors, etc.

[Makoto]

Could the forum problems be due to server issues? There are times when the server seems sluggish or unresponsive to me (it wouldn't load for me earlier today, for example).

It could be that the errors come when the server's lagging just a bit, something times out, and the database doesn't get all the information it wants, so it throws an error. That the errors often seem to 'go away' with a browser refresh also seems to indicate that might be the case.

Of course, I'm not ruling out phpBB/mySQL database corruption, or some other oddity.
If the version of phpBB fukufics is using isn't the latest, would it help to update it? I'm only asking because with another forum (non-fanfic) I frequent, the admin was asked a similar question, and he didn't think it was worth it. (Not that I'm even sure it'd help with this problem, but... eh.)

[Spokavriel]

There have been allot of errors recently. And on allot of the ones I have seen it had a server reset mentioned in it. Others just made comments about page calls being repeated and failing. If I were to guess I would say the servers system board is having a problem instead of the more common drive problems servers run into.

[Makoto]

Yeah, I finally had one of those errors, today (but a refresh cleared it)... oddly, on the page talking about Spaceknight's missing topic.

Usually, I just run into the slow/unresponsive behavior. Though, it's not the only phpBB forum I'm on that acts weird from time to time...

[Spokavriel]

But it's rare that the page fails to load and you get a line of script from the server end having the error instead of a simple browser message. At least it has been rare to me until the start of this month.

[Makoto]

I think it may be more that phpBB might not get all the information/times out on a request, and then it errors, rather than a case where a user has problems retrieving the pages. The user doing a refresh might help (which was why I put quotes around 'go away,' above), but there's no guarantee.

[Sky]

Unless you get access to logs, data, etc, all you can do is speculate.

I'm getting browser "Server not responding" messages, which mean anything from network problems on my end, to DNS lookups failing, to server problems on the host's end. The set of possible causes for this is so wide that it's not worth it to speculate, and only causes more confusion.

Report your problems, but unless you really know what you're talking about, it's been my experience that wild guesses and speculation only hurt server admins' debug processes.

[Makoto]

Yeah, I know. But one of the reasons I'm wondering about it is because I'm interested in possibly setting up a small phpBB forum of my own. If the databases easily corrupt, or I have to worry about installing tons of mods to prevent hacking and spamming...

That, and I'm just naturally curious and prone to speculate, perhaps.

[Spokavriel]

Besides a little Speculation never hurt anyone. It's just allot of the errors, when they show up, mention data acquisition problems. It can't call up the page or the theme or even claims the server is in a shutdown process. Not all browsers will show those partial results and error messages but many will. So it's not like the suppositions are completely blind guessing.