New Server - Admin Template Rebuild takes stupidly long...

[Liam W]

So, since I moved to my new server, the admin template rebuild takes a stupidly long time...

I've never timed it, but a rebuild for add-on install that started ~23:50 is still ongoing (It's now 00:10), and it's on admin template rebuild. I've seen it wrap around the dots...

Any ideas what configuration value I've missed to make it not take so long? Worked fine on my VPS...

EDIT: So the rebuild completed around 00:12.

That's about 22 minutes. Wow.

Liam

 

[TPerry]

Dedicated server?
SSD or SATA
RAID or non-RAID (and hardware or software) and if RAID what level
Memory
CPU
HTTP server used
PHP processor used? (php-fpm, etc)
version of PHP
OpCode caching enabled?
Memcached being used?

You need to provide a LOT more information before someone can say "This is what's wrong".

 

[imthebest]

Is your new server dedicated or a VPS? It might be a hardware issue... run this command to test the IO of your HDD(s) and post the output:

dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync

Do you know how many HDDs are on the server and if they are on hardware or software RAID?

 

[Liam W]

Dedicated server?

Yes.

SSD or SATA

SATA

RAID or non-RAID (and hardware or software) and if RAID what level

non-RAID

Memory

2GB

CPU

Dual Core 1.6Ghz Atom

HTTP server used

Apache (WHM)

PHP processor used? (php-fpm, etc)

SuPHP

version of PHP

5.5.x

OpCode caching enabled?

Zend opcache is enabled in php.ini

Memcached being used?

No.

There you go, sorry for not including them the first time...

EDIT:

root@terminal [~]# dd if=/dev/zero of=test bs=64k count=16k conv=fdatasync
16384+0 records in
16384+0 records out
1073741824 bytes (1.1 GB) copied, 11.5415 s, 93.0 MB/s

I understand that the times can vary greatly, just never had it take so long before, so was a bit unexpected

 

[TPerry]

Odds are your VPS outclassed that server in every instance. The Atom processor is OK, but not something I'd target as a server processor. There are probably some fine tuning that can be done - but for me, the first fine-tuning would consist of dumping cPanel/WHM/Apache and going to a centOS install with @eva2000's CentMin mod on it.
The only downfall to doing that is you have to configure your own MTA (if your server is handling your mail).

 

[Liam W]

Odds are your VPS outclassed that server in every instance. The Atom processor is OK, but not something I'd target as a server processor. There are probably some fine tuning that can be done - but for me, the first fine-tuning would consist of dumping cPanel/WHM/Apache and going to a centOS install with @eva2000's CentMin mod on it.
The only downfall to doing that is you have to configure your own MTA (if your server is handling your mail).

I was thinking of maybe getting rid of the WHM/cPanel, but it would require a considerable amount of work to do as I'm using the server for DNS for my domains as well - not to mention e-mail like you said.

I'll make do for now - the sites aren't running that bad, and I very rarely install add-ons anyway.

Liam

 

[TPerry]

I believe @eva2000's CentMin Mod also does DNS - but maybe he'll chime in here and say for sure.
As for the mail... if it's a singular domain then it's not that hard to do. If you have multiple domains and send/receive mail using each domain and multiple accounts then it gets a little more complicated - but not impossible.

 

[KaiKimera]

I noticed that: many installed styles - long rebuild.

 

[Xon]

SuPHP

This is anti-performance.

Every page request requires a loading the php runtime from scratch, and opcode caching doesn't work. Nor will XenForo be able to cache anything either since you aren't using memcache. As any APUc or xcache caching doesn't work with SuPHP.

You should be able to swap to php-fpm quite easily, as cPannel/WHM supports that now from memory.

 

[imthebest]

Truth being said your server specs are very poor, as @Tracy Perry said it's very probably that your old VPS outperformed your current server because maybe it was on a dual quad-core node with 4 HDDs in RAID 10.

The output of the command I asked you to run says that your HDD copied the data at 93MB/s which is the average speed of an HDD so at least you know that it is not the problem.

I can guarantee you that the problem is your CPU and you can verify it in a very easy way. Install an add-on and let it go through the admin template rebuild again and while it's running open your SSH client, login as root and run the command "top". At the top left corner you'll see your CPU usage, and at the top right corner you'll see your load averages. Also, you'll be able to see your RAM usage... it's very probably that your server is swapping and that make things even worst.

With 2GB of RAM WHM/cPanel is going to eat a lot of resources... may I ask you how much are you paying for the server? Here are some suggestions that will outperform your current server performance:

Future Hosting VM3
2GB RAM, 50GB SAS, 8+ CPU cores equal share and 3TB bandwidth
$33.96/mo with coupon HOLIDAY2014

Source: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1435233

KnownHost VPS2
2GB RAM, 70GB RAID 10, 8+ CPUs equal share and 6TB bandwidth
$29.75/mo with coupon KH15LIFE

Source (outdated plans): http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1411042
They recently updated their plans keeping the same prices (they do it every Christmas): https://www.knownhost.com/managed-vps-packages-2014-compare.html

Plus they both come with WHM/cPanel VPS Optimized (minimal resource usage) and are managed so in case you need help with your server you have support available 24x7. Future Hosting and Known Host are excellent VPS providers, you can search for reviews at WHT. I have used both and I was very happy with them.

I haven't used eva2000's CentMin all-in-one installer however if you want to learn how to manage your server (and get rid of WHM/cPanel soon) I suggest you to install Apache (or nginx if you want), PHP, MySQL (or MariaDB if you want) and configure everything yourself, that way you'll learn. As for the DNS you can use CloudFlare's free plan which provides free DNS management.

 

[WSWD]

While I agree with the others that an ATOM server is likely less powerful than a lot of VPS setups, it should be plenty to run cPanel and your website. Hell, when I started in the hosting industry, we could run cPanel and a couple hundred sites with absolutely no issues on a Pentium 4. Yes...a Pentium 4!

What are your server loads looking like?

 

[TPerry]

Agree @WSWD, but he was specifically asking because his VPS was faster on the rebuilds.
He's going to need to get in and massage a few aspects of it... but I'm not one to help on that as I don't (and no longer will do) much of anything with cPanel.

 

[eva2000]

I believe @eva2000's CentMin Mod also does DNS - but maybe he'll chime in here and say for sure.
As for the mail... if it's a singular domain then it's not that hard to do. If you have multiple domains and send/receive mail using each domain and multiple accounts then it gets a little more complicated - but not impossible.

yeah Centmin Mod uses NSD instead of BIND for DNS if you want it locally served see http://centminmod.com/nginx_domain_dns_setup.html and https://community.centminmod.com/threads/domain-name-dns-setup-on-local-nsd-server.855/

personally, i only ever run DNS off server using dnsmadeeasy or amazon route53 these days

 

[WSWD]

Agree @WSWD, but he was specifically asking because his VPS was faster on the rebuilds.

Well that's easy. You go from a really good server, with drives in RAID10 most likely, and you're likely going to get worse performance. But that doesn't explain why his current server is taking a ridiculous long time. That shouldn't be happening.

That's what we need to get to the bottom of. Everyone is saying that it's the server specs., but I completely disagree. You can run some pretty beefy websites on an ATOM server.

 

[Xon]

That's what we need to get to the bottom of. Everyone is saying that it's the server specs., but I completely disagree. You can run some pretty beefy websites on an ATOM server.

Well I was blaming SuPHP. That is a sudo wrapper invoking CGI php. Slow is the only way to describe it.

And since the rebuild process invokes a new page fairly regularly, that is a lot of performance to throw away.

 

[TPerry]

That's what we need to get to the bottom of. Everyone is saying that it's the server specs., but I completely disagree. You can run some pretty beefy websites on an ATOM server.

Agree... but you can't compare the performance of an Atom based "server" against a well configured VPS... that was my point.

There IS something else that is going on with his setup at a core level - but I don't mess with cPanel and all it's headaches enough to go dig into it. I will sometimes mess with it - but recently even got rid of the VPS I had cPanel running on.