#1
18th Apr 2007 at 10:54 AM
Posts: 8,238
Thanks: 89119 in 22 Posts
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Downtime yesterday - Cookies, Downloads and Thanks
Hi All,
You probably all noticed the downtime yesterday. As I mentioned in
this thread I was going to carry out fileserver maintenance, however due to last minute bug fixing on the DDO, I didn't get a chance to do so. I pushed the maintenance forward, and carried it out yesterday.
The following was done:- Removed traffic throttling modules on the Apache servers Chii and Freya, and instead moved the throttling down to the ethernet layer. The upshot of this is that there wont be any more 503 errors, however, under high load situations you may experience a delay in getting files as before.
- Added a module to Apache to stop download accelerator programs from completely leeching all the slots and bandwidth. See note below.
- Re-enabled the check for a valid MTS2 cookie login for getting files from the servers. See note below.
- Updated the Thanks counters to generate the correct number per user, thread and total number of posts thanked.
A note on download accelerators:
Badly configured download managers try to grab the same file once a second or every 2 seconds, and
every single attempt uses slots on the fileserver, preventing normal downloads from starting and completing. Looking through the logs I've seen the same person attempt to grab 4 or 5 different files every second or two, which is unacceptable. We do
not have lots of servers, or unlimited bandwidth.
From now on, any download accelerator requesting more than 1 file every 2 seconds will be blocked from any further downloads for a period of 60 seconds.
A note on cookie errors:
As mentioned above, I have re-enabled the cookie check for downloading files from MTS2. This is to prevent leeching of our bandwith by external sites and unregistered members. All MTS2 cookies should work across the entire domain of *.modthesims2.com, however if you use some extra security or cookie blockers, then downloads from files.modthesims2.com will fail.
If you have issues downloading and get the nocookie page, then you may check at
http://chii.modthesims2.com/test.php - if that script reports that you have no MTS2 cookies then you must look
on your system for how to fix it.
I will not be disabling this functionality since I believe it is in the best interests of the vast majority of members that they get fast, quick and non corrupt downloads and for the extremely small minority that might have issues, often only small changes are required to get it working again.
Summary:
The upshot of this work is that, with the traffic limitation in place at a lower level, and with extra blocks for leechers, this should give a much faster and more efficient download service to our members so you can all get the custom content you want.
Regards
Delphy
Story books are full of fairy tales, of Kings and Queens, and the bluest skies.