XF 2.2 Too many Guests

[sufilala]

Hi all, happy 2025!

Our forum is small and never has over 20 registered users logged in, but recently it's been getting stuck due to 3000+ "Guests"/unregistered visitors arriving at the same time, which eventually triggers this error:

• MySQL query error [1114]: The table 'xf_session_activity' is full

and the forum content becomes unavailable and displays a standard message on the front end about a problem generating content. Then it seems to resolve itself and the content comes back up, but this is happening more and more often - a few times a day now. I suspect content scrapers for AI but i just really want the forum to be stable again.

I've set the forum not to display to unregistered users, but that makes no difference

I've checked access logs - user agents and IP addresses are not showing any obvious (to me anyway) culprits whose IP I could block

I've looked up the database error and found various obscure suggestions but i hope there may be a better way to sort this out than fiddling with the database?

Any suggestions would be very much appreciates, thanks in advance

 

[smallwheels]

Cloudflare is the only way to fix this problem or get close

Simply no. There are a bunch of different ways. Using Cloudflare is one of them, but neither the only one nor necessarily the best one, nor does it necessarily "solve" the problem or get close to do so. There's an epic thread about the issue with all sorts of hints and experiences:

Thread 'Crazy amount of guests'

Oct 12, 2025

I have a small forum, usually a few hundred guests at most. The last days the number of guests have been unusually high, around 3000 and climbing. We now have over 4800 guests. That's not normal. Many "Viewing unknown page" or "Latest content", with a warning sign. IP addresses are from all corners of the world. Many from south America, Brazil mostly. Also saw quite a number from Vietnam of all places, but everywhere else too.

We're on Cloud and I don't know what to do. Could we be under attack? We have been in the past, a few times I think. For reasons I cannot possibly fathom; we're a...

• Levina
• bot swarms guests
• Replies: 1,885
• Forum: Forum management

• 

 

[greenchicken]

Simply no. There are a bunch of different ways. Using Cloudflare is one of them, but neither the only one nor necessarily the best one, nor does it necessarily "solve" the problem or get close to do so. There's an epic thread about the issue with all sorts of hints and experiences:

Thread 'Crazy amount of guests'

Oct 12, 2025

I have a small forum, usually a few hundred guests at most. The last days the number of guests have been unusually high, around 3000 and climbing. We now have over 4800 guests. That's not normal. Many "Viewing unknown page" or "Latest content", with a warning sign. IP addresses are from all corners of the world. Many from south America, Brazil mostly. Also saw quite a number from Vietnam of all places, but everywhere else too.

We're on Cloud and I don't know what to do. Could we be under attack? We have been in the past, a few times I think. For reasons I cannot possibly fathom; we're a...

• Levina
• bot swarms guests
• Replies: 1,885
• Forum: Forum management

• 

Not a problem then , Enjoy your bots. Been in the forum game since 2001 and this isn't 2001 anymore, I stand by my statement , a 25$ per month cloud flare plan is worth it's weight in gold. Trying to manage a forum where you already have them hitting your server wastes resources port 80 and 443 needs to be blocked and then only allow CF ip's to deliver sanitized traffic to the server

Here is what a 25yr old domain deals with daily


and here are my actual server numbers

• 08:01:13 up 1:42, 0 users, load average: 0.19, 0.08, 0.03
• 213 total, 1 running, 212 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
• 1.5 us, 3.1 sy, 0.0 ni, 93.8 id, 0.0 wa, 1.5 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
• 15663.9 total, 12148.6 free, 1228.2 used, 2287.1 buff/cache
• 8028.0 total, 8028.0 free, 0.0 used. 14089.0 avail Mem

You can block all this crap at the server level but all that noise will use your resources

 

[smallwheels]

Enjoy your bots.

I don't have an issue with bots. They are mitigated successfully, w/o using Cloudflare.

Been in the forum game since 2001

port 80 and 443 needs to be blocked and then only allow CF ip's to deliver sanitized traffic to the server

If all you've learned about server management in 25 years is to praise CF as the only solution and to become aggressive towards anyone that hints that there are other solutions as well you've obviously not learned much. For the bot purpose CF is basically nothing more than a firewall on a different host and this is a very classical setup that existed already years before you joined the forum game. There are many ways to build something like that (and even more with todays options for virtualization) w/o even thinking about CF and wether one really needs a setup like that highly depends from the own situation. But then again you seem not interested to learn anything aside your beliefs.

 

[Alvin63]

Having an issue here - see post linked below. Mine has gradually gone up from a regular 500, to 2000 and now regularly 5,000 - trying to work out if this is what is causing the issue in the post below - or something else causing it.

Server said very heavy request volume from service_worker.js maxing out cpu

A

XF 2.3 Thread 'Problems using ACP - crashing'

Sep 4, 2026

Since yesterday, if I try to enter ACP, save anything in ACP or even approve something in the manual approval queue, the site "crashes" with the warning attached below. If a I wait a minute or so and click "try again" I get in /it gets saved. But it happens repeatedly. I did edit some html in a couple of places within ACP yesterday but I think it started before that. However I assumed it might have been editing the html had caused the server to tighten security, so contacted the server to ask if there were any restrictions since yesterday - they said can't see any issues their end...

• Alvin63
• Replies: 1
• Forum: Troubleshooting and problems

 

[smallwheels]

Mine has gradually gone up from a regular 500, to 2000 and now regularly 5,000 - trying to work out if this is what is causing the issue in the post below - or something else causing it.

Server said very heavy request volume from service_worker.js maxing out cpu

5.000 users is normally nothing that would bring XF to sweat, not even on a good shared hosting account. So it depends from your configuration, your add ons and the power of your hosting if they are an issue.

The fastest and easiest to ease up load is to not allow guest to use the search and to see the "what's new" page. If these 5000 users are bots (which is probably the case) you can (and should) follow one of the strategies for fighting those as developed in the thread linked further up:

Thread 'Crazy amount of guests'

Oct 12, 2025

I have a small forum, usually a few hundred guests at most. The last days the number of guests have been unusually high, around 3000 and climbing. We now have over 4800 guests. That's not normal. Many "Viewing unknown page" or "Latest content", with a warning sign. IP addresses are from all corners of the world. Many from south America, Brazil mostly. Also saw quite a number from Vietnam of all places, but everywhere else too.

We're on Cloud and I don't know what to do. Could we be under attack? We have been in the past, a few times I think. For reasons I cannot possibly fathom; we're a...

• Levina
• bot swarms guests
• Replies: 1,885
• Forum: Forum management

• 

 

[Alvin63]

5.000 users is normally nothing that would bring XF to sweat, not even on a good shared hosting account. So it depends from your configuration, your add ons and the power of your hosting if they are an issue.

The fastest and easiest to ease up load is to not allow guest to use the search and to see the "what's new" page. If these 5000 users are bots (which is probably the case) you can (and should) follow one of the strategies for fighting those as developed in the thread linked further up:

Thread 'Crazy amount of guests'

Oct 12, 2025

I have a small forum, usually a few hundred guests at most. The last days the number of guests have been unusually high, around 3000 and climbing. We now have over 4800 guests. That's not normal. Many "Viewing unknown page" or "Latest content", with a warning sign. IP addresses are from all corners of the world. Many from south America, Brazil mostly. Also saw quite a number from Vietnam of all places, but everywhere else too.

We're on Cloud and I don't know what to do. Could we be under attack? We have been in the past, a few times I think. For reasons I cannot possibly fathom; we're a...

• Levina
• bot swarms guests
• Replies: 1,885
• Forum: Forum management

• 

Thanks. I already have the cloudflare app. However, what else could be causing very heavy usage of service_worker.js please?

 

[smallwheels]

I already have the cloudflare app.

Do you only have the app or do you have CF configured as well? If you still have 5.000 users in parallel CF does not seem to work against bots on your forum, possibly partly b/c of a wrong config. I heavily doubt that hamsters are so popular that you have that many genuine people in parallel visiting your forum, especially not a ratio of 1 registered user to 3000 guests:



As a standard CF caches pages. Obviously, dynamic and interactive pages like search or what's new cannot be cached. So w/o checking your config sorrowfully there is no way to give advice and even less so if you don't follow it anyway.

 

[Alvin63]

That was a bit harsh and a lot of assumptions! I wondered if someone could answer my question - if not bots then what else could be causing very heavy usage of service_worker.js please?

 

[smallwheels]

if not bots then what else could be causing very heavy usage of service_worker.js please?

This is probably rather a question for a support ticket to XF if you want a solid answer:

Customer area login

xenforo.com

 

[Alvin63]

Few months ago I blocked Singapore due to large bot swarm and lost Google search pages because it seems some Google crawlers run from Singapore. It was bad took some time to recover.

If blocking Singapore you need to add this "and not cf.client.bot" at the end - see below - after the country name. This screenshot is from a managed challenge rather than a block, but it's the same phrase needed. It blocks everything except Google, Bing, Duck Duck go and all reputable search engines - just lets them through. I later added other countries to be challenged but left the phrase for all of them, just in case Google et all launch from another country at times, and it does no harm.

 

[greenchicken]

(not ip.geoip.country in {"US" "CA"} and not cf.client.bot)

Name it Country Challenge

Select Managed challenge if your main audience is USA.