on-rev server upgrade-related problems

Fri May 8 16:39:25 EDT 2020

While I'm glad the issue has been tracked down, we need to remember that 
what's really happened is that a work-around has been found (due to 
great detective work by Matthias).

The real problem remains, but will, I hope, some day be identified and 
solved.

Problem statement : the upgrade to significantly faster hardware, a 
modern 64-bit OS and LC6.x to 9.x cause a degradation in performance 
sufficient that client apps failed because the server responses were so 
delayed that the clients timed out.

Work-around: increase the timeout values on the clients (and be glad 
that Phil controls bother server and clients, so is able to do this).

Real problem: there are still too many areas in which 9.x performance is 
much worse than 6.x, and it would be good to see more (some) info from 
the mothership on how they plan to tackle these. Phil may be able to 
shed some light on the kind of things being done on his sever app, to 
see if that can identify particular areas that are having this negative 
effect.

Alex.

On 08/05/2020 13:28, matthias rebbe via use-livecode wrote:
> Phil,
>
> i´ve answered already to the bug report, but maybe this is also of interest for the others.
>
> As i have also accoun ton the same On-Revi  as you and did some test.
> I am sure it´s a tsNet timeout problem.
>
> tsNET has several default timeouts. The defaults are 30, 0, 300000, 60000, 30, 1000
>
>   The fifth one defines "the time period in seconds that is used to calculate whether or not the transfer has fallen below the low speed limit set by pLowSpeedLimit."
> It can be set either to 0 to disable the time out or to any other value.
>
> In my first test my LC Server script returned just a 5MB file back to the client. That worked.
>
> I then added a "wait 45 seconds"  to the script before outputting/returning 5MB file to the client. I got exactly the same error message than youor your  clients,
>
> "tsneterr: (28) Operation too slow. Less than 1000 bytes/sec transferred the last 30 seconds"
> This makes sense as because of the "wait 45 seconds" we exceeded the default time-out value of 30.
>
>
> I then added the following line to the client script.
>
> tsNetSetTimeouts 30, 0, 300000, 60000, 120, 1000
> With it i´ve changed the timeout to 120 seconds.
>
> After adding that line, the 5 MB file was received again by the client w/o the tsNet error.
>
> So setting the timeout either to a higher value or to 0 in the client script should solve it. I am not sure, but i assume setting it to 0 is not recommended.
>
> Hope this helps.
>
> Matthias
>
> -
> Matthias Rebbe
> Life Is Too Short For Boring Code
>
>> Am 07.05.2020 um 20:35 schrieb Phil Davis via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>:
>>
>> Thank you all for so many great questions and responses! I don't have time to give a comprehensive response right now but (1) I'll whittle away at it and (2) all your comments renew my hope that a solution is out there waiting for me to find it.
>>
>> Quick responses:
>>
>> - I too would start by going back to LC 6.6.x on the server if I could, but apparently the recent server upgrades - new hardware running LC 9.5.1 - are not backward compatible. That's what I'm told at least.
>>
>> - The LC client app is POSTing a request to an LC CGI system on an on-rev server. The server system assembles a data packet (normally an encoded array), encrypts & encodes it and writes it back to the client. The packet can be any size up to maybe a megabyte or two, but that would be pretty big. Normally the packet size is no more than a few hundred KB.
>>
>> Thanks again -
>> Phil
>>
>>
>> On 5/7/20 7:29 AM, Ralph DiMola via use-livecode wrote:
>>> Phil,
>>>
>>> I had a problem with a GET request with a url encoded url in a parameter
>>> after the upgrade. There are new security rules. I changed it to a POST and
>>> it then worked. I am changing my apps to use a POST. Robin had lifted the
>>> new security rule for me temporarily until all the apps are updated. One
>>> other thing, the new MySQL server is now Maria DB. It is functionally the
>>> same but I noticed if you have a column with no default value but is
>>> required and the field is not in the SQL update then it throws an error.
>>> MySQL did not do this.
>>>
>>> Ralph DiMola
>>> IT Director
>>> Evergreen Information Services
>>> rdimola at evergreeninfo.net
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: use-livecode [mailto:use-livecode-bounces at lists.runrev.com] On Behalf
>>> Of Phil Davis via use-livecode
>>> Sent: Thursday, May 07, 2020 3:18 AM
>>> To: How to use LiveCode
>>> Cc: Phil Davis
>>> Subject: on-rev server upgrade-related problems
>>>
>>> Has anyone had part or all of an on-rev server-based system stop working
>>> since the server upgrades a month or so ago?
>>>
>>> My client has an on-rev.com-based training system. Training delivery is via
>>> web browser, and that part continues to work. But there are several desktop
>>> apps that provide training development, management and real-time monitoring.
>>> All of those apps became non-functional as soon as the upgrades were done,
>>> and remain so. I haven't been able to figure out how to restore
>>> functionality.
>>>
>>> Robin in on-rev support has been very helpful, but we still don't have a
>>> solution. This is the bug report:
>>>
>>>      https://quality.livecode.com/show_bug.cgi?id=22704
>>>
>>> I wouldn't wish this on anyone, but in a way I'm hoping it isn't just us.
>>>
>>> Thanks -
>>> Phil Davis
>>>
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>> -- 
>> Phil Davis
>> 503-307-4363
>>
>>
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