Please help: RT3.4.4 running really slow

don_garbage · October 30, 2006, 4:44pm

Hi all,

My users are complaining that RT is slow and not working to the point of
being useless.

I’m very new to system administration and my RT3.4.4 is not working well on
Ubuntu 6.06. I have followed the instructions here:
http://wiki.bestpractical.com/index.cgi?UbuntuInstallGuide
Page loads are very slow and often stall without ever loading. I’m using
postgres7.4 for the database with ssl (https).

Where should I start trying to track this down? Is there a log file I should
look at?

Please help,
Don

Barry_L_Kline · October 30, 2006, 5:16pm

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don garbage wrote:

Where should I start trying to track this down? Is there a log file I
should look at?

Please help,
Don

What are the hardware specs on this Ubuntu machine? CPU, Memory and
disk I/O (e.g. IDE, SATA or SCSI)

What does the “top” command show – anything bubble to the top as being
particularly bad.

Is this a new install that works poorly, or is it a working machine that
has been slowly degrading?

Barry
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don_garbage · October 30, 2006, 5:57pm

Barry,

Thanks so much for the fast response.

The machine has 1GB of RAM, 200 GB SATA hard drive, 2.8GHZ dual core
pentium.

My Ubuntu machine is very lightly loaded (nothing of note taking up
resources from running top command). When trying to load a page (clicking on
an open ticket for example), apache2 and postmaster show up briefly at the
beginning of the list for top then they disappear. 9 out of 10 times, the
page never fully loads. All that is shown the Best Practical banner at the
top of the page and the progress bars shows about 1/3 has loaded.

This is a new install of RT that works poorly.

I’d appreciate any further help you could offer.

Thanks,
Don

Barry_L_Kline · October 30, 2006, 6:50pm

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don garbage wrote:

Barry,

Thanks so much for the fast response.

The machine has 1GB of RAM, 200 GB SATA hard drive, 2.8GHZ dual core
pentium.

My Ubuntu machine is very lightly loaded (nothing of note taking up
resources from running top command). When trying to load a page
(clicking on an open ticket for example), apache2 and postmaster show up
briefly at the beginning of the list for top then they disappear. 9 out
of 10 times, the page never fully loads. All that is shown the Best
Practical banner at the top of the page and the progress bars shows
about 1/3 has loaded.

This is a new install of RT that works poorly.

I’d appreciate any further help you could offer.

Thanks,
Don

Are you seeing any errors show up in the Apache logs? I’m not familiar
with where Ubuntu puts it, but I’d look for /var/log/httpd/error_log.
If something pukes while Apache is processing it you’ll get the kind of
problem you’re describing and if you’re lucky you’ll find something in
the log to indicate what it is.

Barry
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Ryan_Fox · October 30, 2006, 6:43pm

don garbage wrote:

The machine has 1GB of RAM, 200 GB SATA hard drive, 2.8GHZ dual core
pentium.

My Ubuntu machine is very lightly loaded (nothing of note taking up
resources from running top command). When trying to load a page
(clicking on an open ticket for example), apache2 and postmaster show up
briefly at the beginning of the list for top then they disappear. 9 out
of 10 times, the page never fully loads. All that is shown the Best
Practical banner at the top of the page and the progress bars shows
about 1/3 has loaded.

This is a new install of RT that works poorly.

Certainly these are adequate machine specs. If other network transfers
between this machine and the clients are behaving poorly, I’d guess
something network level, like duplex mismatch or flaky cable.

If other transfers are ok, I’d try to verify if other web pages/apps run
from the same server also have problems. If so, look at apache
error_log and see if something like mod_gzip is causing problems.

If it is only RT that is having this problem, well, hm, I’d be surprised.

What version of apache/php/postgres is this on?

Ryan

rfox.vcf (276 Bytes)

Asif_Iqbal2 · October 30, 2006, 7:44pm

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don garbage wrote:

Barry,

Thanks so much for the fast response.

The machine has 1GB of RAM, 200 GB SATA hard drive, 2.8GHZ dual core
pentium.

My Ubuntu machine is very lightly loaded (nothing of note taking up
resources from running top command). When trying to load a page
(clicking on an open ticket for example), apache2 and postmaster show up
briefly at the beginning of the list for top then they disappear. 9 out
of 10 times, the page never fully loads. All that is shown the Best
Practical banner at the top of the page and the progress bars shows
about 1/3 has loaded.

Make sure you are collection slow logs in mysql as well. It may tell
you issue with mysql part

This is a new install of RT that works poorly.

I’d appreciate any further help you could offer.

Thanks,
Don

Are you seeing any errors show up in the Apache logs? I’m not familiar
with where Ubuntu puts it, but I’d look for /var/log/httpd/error_log.
If something pukes while Apache is processing it you’ll get the kind of
problem you’re describing and if you’re lucky you’ll find something in
the log to indicate what it is.

Barry
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don_garbage · October 30, 2006, 7:49pm

Barry,

Thanks again for the quick response.

I’ve looked in the apache2 error log file, which on ubuntu is
/var/log/apache2/error.log.
There is no “puking” in the apache2 log file when the page is requested. The
access.log file also looks normal with 3 “GET” messages.

Any other thoughts on where to look?

Thanks again for any further help on this,
Don

Barry_L_Kline · October 30, 2006, 8:22pm

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Ryan Fox wrote:

This is a new install of RT that works poorly.

Certainly these are adequate machine specs. If other network transfers
between this machine and the clients are behaving poorly, I’d guess
something network level, like duplex mismatch or flaky cable.

If other transfers are ok, I’d try to verify if other web pages/apps run
from the same server also have problems. If so, look at apache
error_log and see if something like mod_gzip is causing problems.

If it is only RT that is having this problem, well, hm, I’d be surprised.

What version of apache/php/postgres is this on?

Ryan

These was going to be my next set of questions. Which Ubuntu are you
using? I use CentOS 4.4 for this purpose and have never had any
problems like this. If you tell me the Ubuntu version I’ll compare its
specs of apache/php/postgres with my installations, just to see how they
compare.

Barry
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don_garbage · October 30, 2006, 8:25pm

Ryan,

Thanks very much for your response.

I’ve copied the html of a page generated for an RT ticket and copied it out.
I can access that page with no problems. So, there must be a problem
somewhere in the machinery used by RT. Other network transfers on the
machine do not have any problems.

I’ve looked in the apache2 log files (error.log and access.log) and there
are no messages indicating any problems. I don’t see anything about
mod_gzip.

apache2 version info:
Apache/2.0.55 (Ubuntu) mod_ssl/2.0.55 OpenSSL/0.9.8a mod_perl/2.0.2
Perl/v5.8.7
php version info:
php is not installed on the machine (does RT require php?)
postgres version: 7.4

Any further help is much appreciated.

Thanks,
Don

don_garbage · October 30, 2006, 8:28pm

Barry,

I’m running Ubuntu 6.06.

Thanks so much for the help on this,
Don

don_garbage · October 30, 2006, 8:34pm

Asif,

I’m running postgres. What is the appropriate setting for logging for
postgres?

Thanks,
Don

Aubrey_King1 · October 30, 2006, 8:36pm

Can someone suggest a full-featured reporting tool out there? I tried
RTx-Statistics and it gives me a lot, but I just need to have a report
generated like ticket search does, but INCLUDE the details of each ticket.
Is there a way to hack that in custom fields of a standard search?

Aubrey King
Systems Engineer
IP Systems Engineering
Global Crossing, Ltd.

Barry_L_Kline · October 30, 2006, 9:55pm

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don garbage wrote:

apache2 version info:
Apache/2.0.55 (Ubuntu) mod_ssl/2.0.55 OpenSSL/0.9.8a mod_perl/2.0.2
Perl/v5.8.7
php version info:
php is not installed on the machine (does RT require php?)
postgres version: 7.4

No, RT does not require PHP. Your machine should surely be up to this
task. Here are some more questions:

Did you install mod_fastcgi?

Would you please post the contents of your httpd.conf file, without
comments. Use:

grep -v ‘^#’ /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf |
grep -v ‘^$’ > /tmp/httpd.conf.clean

to create a cleaned file, then post it. Also, could you post your
/opt/rt3/etc/RT_SiteConfig.pm file, too? You can do the same as above
for that file (to remove comments)… You might want to obfuscate the
database password & host info before posting…

Barry

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don_garbage · October 31, 2006, 1:33am

Barry,

The configuration files are attached. Ubuntu has split out the apache2
config files into:
/etc/apache2/apache2.conf
/etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl

mod_fastcgi is not installed. Should it be?

Thanks so much for the help,
Don

apache2.conf (6.38 KB)

RT_SiteConfig.pm (539 Bytes)

ssl (1.27 KB)

don_garbage · November 2, 2006, 2:11pm

Barry & rt-user community,

Has anyone had an opportunity to check out my config files?

Thanks so much for any further assistance on this,
Don

don_garbage · November 4, 2006, 2:00pm

Hi Barry,

I just checked again for mod_fastcgi, and, it appears that I do have it. In
ubuntu, it is called
libfcgi-perl

So, back to the drawing board.

Have you had the chance to check out my config files?

Thanks for any further help,
Don

don_garbage · November 7, 2006, 3:26pm

Hi all,

The problem continues and my users are becoming very impatient with me.

Can someone lend a hand? Please refer to this email thread for the problem
I’m having.

Thanks,
Don

Barry_L_Kline · November 7, 2006, 3:46pm

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don garbage wrote:

Hi all,

The problem continues and my users are becoming very impatient with me.

Can someone lend a hand? Please refer to this email thread for the
problem I’m having.

Thanks,
Don

Hi Don.

I did reply to you a couple of days ago (sent private email because I
accidentally “replied” instead of “reply all”). My reply was:

Sorry Don. I missed your post.

You asked, “mod_fastcgi is not installed. Should it be?”

The answer is YES. You want something to accelerate the Perl code.
Without it Apache has to spawn a process, run the Perl interpreter, then
execute the code. This takes time and can make an otherwise snappy
application seem like a dog. Sound familiar?

With mod_fastcgi you’ll have the interpreter always warmed up and ready
in the bullpen. Calls from the webserver to execute some Perl code
won’t be delayed while the process sets up, so your users will be
waiting only for the code to execute, which is generally quite fast.

I don’t know anything about Ubuntu and how they lay things out, or even
which package manager they use. Our internal docs describe our setup
for RT on CentOS 4 (A respin of RHEL). I’d be happy to send you our
instructions but you’d have to adapt them to Ubuntu. The difficulties
you’d have doing that depend on your Linux admin skills.

Barry

So, have you installed fastcgi yet and I missed your post?

Barry

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don_garbage · November 7, 2006, 3:54pm

Hey Barry,

Wow, that was fast, thanks so much.

I actually did respond to your email. Here was my reply:
Hi Barry,

 I just checked again for mod_fastcgi, and, it appears that I do have

it. In ubuntu, it is called
libfcgi-perl

 So, back to the drawing board. :)

 Have you had the chance to check out my config files?

 Thanks for any further help,
 Don

Perhaps the problem is in my config files. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for all the help, it is very much appreciated,
Don

Les_Driggers · November 7, 2006, 5:55pm

-----Original Message-----
From: rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com
[mailto:rt-users-bounces@lists.bestpractical.com] On Behalf
Of don garbage
Sent: Tuesday, November 07, 2006 9:55 AM
To: blkline@attglobal.net
Cc: rt-users@lists.bestpractical.com
Subject: Re: [rt-users] Please help: RT3.4.4 running really slow

Hey Barry,

Wow, that was fast, thanks so much.

I actually did respond to your email. Here was my reply:
Hi Barry,
 I just checked again for mod_fastcgi, and, it appears 
that I do have it. In ubuntu, it is called
libfcgi-perl
 So, back to the drawing board. :)

 Have you had the chance to check out my config files?

 Thanks for any further help,
 Don
Perhaps the problem is in my config files. Any thoughts?

Thanks again for all the help, it is very much appreciated, Don

Hi Don,
Maybe I missed it, but your /etc/apache2/sites-available/ssl file has
the following line:
Include “/etc/request-tracker3.4/apache2-modperl2.conf”

Have you posted that file?

Les

Les Driggers Manager, Corporate IT
T 662/236-8326 F 662/236-2037 ldriggers@fncinc.com
FNC Inc. 1214 Office Park Drive Oxford, MS 38655
www.fncinc.com
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