Exceeded Max user Connections

[Xarcell]

Today, all of my sites went down. I was trying to track down what causes it and it was this:

An exception occurred: User 'xarcell' has exceeded the 'max_user_connections' resource (current value: 4294967295) in /home/xarcell/public_html/xarchology.com/library/Zend/Db/Adapter/Mysqli.php on line 333

1. Zend_Db_Adapter_Mysqli->_connect() in Zend/Db/Adapter/Abstract.php at line 315
2. Zend_Db_Adapter_Abstract->getConnection() in XenForo/Application.php at line 525
3. XenForo_Application->loadDb() in XenForo/Application.php at line 752
4. XenForo_Application->lazyLoad() in XenForo/Application.php at line 782
5. XenForo_Application::get() in XenForo/Model.php at line 161
6. XenForo_Model->_getDb() in XenForo/Model/DataRegistry.php at line 138
7. XenForo_Model_DataRegistry->_getMultiFromDb() in XenForo/Model/DataRegistry.php at line 97
8. XenForo_Model_DataRegistry->getMulti() in XenForo/Dependencies/Abstract.php at line 134
9. XenForo_Dependencies_Abstract->preLoadData() in XenForo/FrontController.php at line 125
10. XenForo_FrontController->run() in /home/xarcell/public_html/xarchology.com/index.php at line 17

I have no idea what that means, or how it happened, but I do know that when I exceed "max_user_connections", my host will shut me down because I'm on a shared server and I'm draining all the resources.

I find this funny because it is a dead site and has been the beta release, which is what it is running on I think and the only user is me. I installed it there for testing purposes. My only guess is that a bot did something?

Can anyone share some light on this?

 

[Divvens]

Who is your host?
Generally shared host set max concurrent mysql connections from 5 to 15. My host has set it to 25, with 25 they say it can handle around 70-75 simultaneous online users. You'll have to check with your host what are the limits.

 

[Xarcell]

I think it's 5-15.

I guess the site was being over-loaded by spam bots?

 

[Jake Bunce]

I guess the site was being over-loaded by spam bots?

Very possible. Some one was creating connections. If it wasn't regular users then robots are likely.

The fix is to have your host increase the limit. Or upgrade to a better server.

 

[Xarcell]

I would have to upgrade to increase it to 25.

 

[Dodgeboard]

Today, all of my sites went down. I was trying to track down what causes it and it was this:

I have no idea what that means, or how it happened, but I do know that when I exceed "max_user_connections", my host will shut me down because I'm on a shared server and I'm draining all the resources.

I find this funny because it is a dead site and has been the beta release, which is what it is running on I think and the only user is me. I installed it there for testing purposes. My only guess is that a bot did something?

Can anyone share some light on this?

I used to get these problems all the time when I was using vBulletin. Sometimes 10-20 per day. I thought it was a problem with my host (also a shared server plan - Hostgator).. Since I upgrade to Xenforo, I haven't seen it ever....NOT ONCE! And the site is busier than ever.

 

[Dean]

...set it to 25, with 25 they say it can handle around 70-75 simultaneous online users. You'll have to check with your host what are the limits.

That matches my experience as well. Actually we could handle 125 'real' people that did not click too often, but when something of interest was happening then the max was about 75. We did not have much bot traffic at that time, and we were using vb3.8 & HG shared hosting.

 

[Xarcell]

It turns out is was bots. All of my sites run on the same server. One of my sites that runs on SMF in which I make SMF themes was overloaded with bots, so my host shut me down for the moment.

I'll most likely upgrade after the new year.

 

[sforum]

I have the same problem, and have noticed that my forum is very often sluggish, there are many double/triple-posts, time-outs, etc.

I just had a look at the server log and it looks like this:



Is this a XenForo problem, or something I should contact my host about? I never had any problems at all when running PunBB, even when I had hundreds of users on-site at a time.

 

[craigiri]

It may be worthwhile to disallow bots except for the known ones that you desire (goog, etc.).....

 

[sforum]

It may be worthwhile to disallow bots except for the known ones that you desire (goog, etc.).....

How does one do this?

Sounds like a handy feature; presumably all these other "bots" are spambots!

 

[MattW]

I have the same problem, and have noticed that my forum is very often sluggish, there are many double/triple-posts, time-outs, etc.

I just had a look at the server log and it looks like this:

View attachment 28127

Is this a XenForo problem, or something I should contact my host about? I never had any problems at all when running PunBB, even when I had hundreds of users on-site at a time.

Your host has set a limit of 10 concurrent MySQL connections, which you are hitting the limit on.

 

[sforum]

Your host has set a limit of 10 concurrent MySQL connections, which you are hitting the limit on.

Thanks; I have filed a ticket with my host.

It may be worthwhile to disallow bots except for the known ones that you desire (goog, etc.).....

I would still be interested in how one does this, though! It sounds as though it may curb a lot of spambots. Is that the case, or are there negative connotations to disallowing bots in this way?

Thanks.

 

[MattW]

I would still be interested in how one does this, though! It sounds as though it may curb a lot of spambots. Is that the case, or are there negative connotations to disallowing bots in this way?

http://www.robotstxt.org/robotstxt.html

 

[CTXMedia]

I would still be interested in how one does this, though! It sounds as though it may curb a lot of spambots. Is that the case, or are there negative connotations to disallowing bots in this way?

It's quite possibly you can't if you're on shared hosting - but usually you'd add the IP addresses of the spiders/bots to your firewall and deny them access to your server.

There's a Chinese one called Baidu that is quite agressive, and Google will often visit heavily if you've just migrated from another platform (you can slow Googlebot down by changing the speed setting in Google Webmaster Tools - at least for a short while until it's reindexed most of your content.)

Cheers,
Shaun

 

[MattW]

You can load a robots.txt file even if you are on a shared host, it's just a case of putting it in the root folder of your site.

Although, it's usually only "good" bots which follow the rules in there, and "bad" bots will simply ignore it anyway. In which case, only way to block them would be via the firewall.......which as above, probably isn't an option on shared hosting.

 

[craigiri]

Something like this may create a good robots.txt file
http://www.mcanerin.com/EN/search-engine/robots-txt.asp

Also, you can slow down the google crawl rate in goog webmaster tools. I did that soon after I moved to XF since google was sucking many gigs per day.

 

[sforum]

It's quite possibly you can't if you're on shared hosting - but usually you'd add the IP addresses of the spiders/bots to your firewall and deny them access to your server.

I'm with apisnetworks, who seem to be a very forward-thinking host and are always very accommodating to any requests I have, fortunately.

There's a Chinese one called Baidu that is quite agressive, and Google will often visit heavily if you've just migrated from another platform...

Ah, that actually sounds like it might be a good thing, in that case! One of my main concerns about the migration was that my (previously brilliant) Google rankings are now in tatters, and my forum rarely appears on the first page, save for the most specific searches. Does that mean that this aggressive Google bot will eventually restore the ranking I enjoyed previously, as time goes by?

Thanks.

 

[CTXMedia]

I wouldn't know about pagerank - mine didn't change - but when I initially migrated my server was being ground to an almost halt by the re-spidering. The blocking of Baidu and turning down of Googlebot's speed helped get over that initial hump, and as Google got caught up with my content I was then able to return the bot speed to normal.

 

[MattW]

When I migrated, I specifically set google to index the site as fast as possible, as the page URLs changed from the phpBB to XenForo, so needed to get my site back up the listings as soon as possible.