just curious...

and how does it compare to a..

Dual Athlon Support
Dual Adaptec Ultra 160
Dual 3com 10/100
4 DDR Slots

i know nada about computers..

fill me in please..

~~PeAcE~~ john

[ June 08, 2001: Message edited by: SuBaRu-ImPrEzA_RS ]

The server is in fact a Dell 1400 Server:

Dual P-667s
512MB Memory
(3)9GB HDs 18GB SCSI Raid Array
10/100 Eth Card

It's really a beast... I just found out today that InfoPop's (the company that makes UBB) server is only a P-500 with 1/2 gig of memory. So we are way ahead of them, but we actually get 10 times the traffic they do.

-Nick

nice

Nick, does UBB use a database backend, or is it purely a combination of CGI and HTML?

since our server is THAT good have you checked out..vBulletin Version 2.0.0
www.vbulletin.com (http://www.vbulletin.com)

im not getting pissy abou the new UBB..just wondering if you have actually LOOKED at vBulletin Version 2.0.0

like i asked before, if our server even compares to what i mentioned above..

vbulletin has TONS of settings..
all the icons look REALLY good
and www.off-topic.net (http://www.off-topic.net) is running it..
it looks really good,you should check it out ;)

once again, not flaming..just showing you vbulletin ;)

~~PeAcE~~ John

vBulletin doesn't allow us to keep... EVERYTHING that we already have here, so quit asking about it. :p

BTW Nick, sounds like the server is low on RAM. They're running a 500 and this server is a dual 667, but they're equal in RAM.

Hmm, what type of ram do you guys need. I might be able to "donate" some to a cause.
-Neal

Good time to purchase RAM too.....

I would be interested in hearing how much it actually uses of the physical memory during high traffic times. If its closing in on 80%, its not a bad idea to look to add more.

Philip

hehe before you worry about RAM just because someone else has the same amount, maybe we should ask: what OS are you running.

The server seems fairly fast to me. The only RAM-intensive operation for something like this would be probably re-indexing the databases, but I'm not sure how often UBB does that.

-Pat

patr - http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph/?host=www.i-club.com

unless it's been upgraded recently, the real problem with UBB is the flatfile databases it uses. awwww yeah baby...

a buddy of mine is writing a SQL bulletin board. he's got about 50-65% of UBB's functionality thus far.

It is very easy to write an ASP/COM/SQL message board system, and COM is much less server (mem and proc) intensive than mostly script based systems. The only thing is that you have to be running a windows based server - but it sounds like the dell probably is.

I was actually thinking of writing one to pass around for free to all of the music sites that are popping up around here in Sacramento. A friend of mine asked me to do it for his site www.sacramento-usa.org (http://www.sacramento-usa.org) site which will be released soon. I told him to use UBB since its doing so well here, but it looks like it has problems. What kind of functionality in UBB is actually being used? I see the multiple boards, logins for user recognition, security and access levels, the little picture things, and this newer version now has the UBB Code blocks. What else should a different board have? What's missing from UBB?

Oh, I'm a networked systems programmer and DBA by the way.

The Dell probably isn't running NT.

Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 22:20:23 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.14 (Unix) (Red-Hat/Linux) mod_perl/1.24
Last-Modified: Thu, 17 May 2001 18:47:42 GMT

Thank Heavens

So it is just a file-based bbs. No wonder why searches hit the wall. :p

A web + DB system is much more scalable...check out AnandTech Forums (http://forums.anandtech.com) for a site that handles at least 10x the concurrent traffic that I-club does. Runs Fusetalk on 6 web servers (dual Xeon's and Athlons) and 1 DB server.

The best hardware upgrade to improve this site would definately be memory. It will allow a larger file cache and less disk I/O. At the rate I-club seems to be growing, I bet UBB will hit it's limit in the not too distant future. :(

BTW Nick & company, don't read this as an attack on your choice of bulletin board software. You have done great work here and I thank you for providing this discussion forum for us. This site wouldn't be growing as it has if it weren't for your hard work. Rock on guys! :D

Edit: I can't spell. :o

[ June 08, 2001: Message edited by: beethoven ]

It wouldn't get to an uptime of 120 days with NT :D :D :D

[ June 10, 2001: Message edited by: jasony ]

Thanks guys... yeah I personally just upped the ram in the box from 256 to 512, and There is a hardware raid card on it's way to me from Dell, again from me...

I think the decision of a software raid was a big mistake, but at the time we couldnt' afford anything more. We only got $3K in donations to put towards the server.

We are indeed running RedHat Linux, so the Ram is actually pretty damn good, we still have a nice size buffer in the physical mempoy compared to before, and we are just occasionally dipping into the virtual memory.

If anyone wants to flat out DONATE memory for the server I am more than happy to take it, but as far as buying more don't need it.

And BTW, if anyone complains about donating money for the club and not getting their way around here. They first need to have donated more money to this site than either Alex or myself, then they can have their soapbox back! :)

Sorry, just had to go on a little rant there, I've heard to many people complaining in the past about that, and I was getting tired of hearing it.

BTW, by the end of this week I alone will have put about $1K into the server. So you guys have some catching up to do. ;)

As far as running out of server... I think we'll be ok for a while longer with the server once the new raid card is intalled (this upcoming weekend, heads up on the downtime).

As far as another Bullenin Board System, I'm open to anything, but I honestly don't think any other private bulletin board system in the world gets the amount of constant traffic we see here.

We get 6 million page views on the forums alone a month. We server about a constant 100K connections per hour, and the traffic is non stop. And most board the majority of members just read, here someone always has something to add to the traffic alone to UBB is increased tremendously.

If you guys want to do some research on your own go for it... You need to find something that's not to expensive (Under $500), has all the same features as UBB (figure on the last version we had, since I am still applying hacks right now), can convert all the old messages and users, will run on RedHat, and is able to support the actual amount of traffic we get.

Neal:
PM me if you are really interested in donating some ram to us.

-Nick