Possible Cause For Steem.Supply Performance Issues
I know that during the last couple of days steem.supply has been very sloooooooow. Sometimes I can't even load it and a blank page is shown. Chrome users may see a 500 error message, or a 503 timeout message. Most of the time, the blank page hides a timeout error, somewhere between the calls to steem nodes, and their response.
I've been debugging in different contexts and scenarios for the past day and a half and it seems there is a performance issue that affects both my server and seed nodes. When I access it from my Mac, there is no problem.
It looks like a recent hardware bug affecting almost all Intel processors has been patched in the last few days, but the patch, although solving the potential security problems, resulted in poor performance. If you want to read the details, this post will help:
Intel’s processors have a security bug and the fix could slow down PCs
That would explain why some servers, probably AMD-based, are not affected by these problems.
At the moment, I can't confirm 100% that this is the cause, but it seems to have the highest odds.
I will keep you updated and appreciate your patience until the problems are fixed.
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
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I guess steem.supply should be deployed in blockchain, to avoid any single point failure...few nodes should run amd and few Intel...LOL!
Lets get to the bottom of this. I'm taking apart my computer tonight :-D
haha jk - way too many STEEMZ on this baby
The fixes had not gone out yet. Steemd.com is not down, but not updating, and it notes "Head Block age 8 hours."
I think it's something on Steemit's end.
Content nodes are horrendously slow, I benchmarked a few and all public RPC nodes have very low throughput. I added a few extra checks to the transport layer and now at least it prints that the network is congested or there is a high load on the content nodes (talking about steem,supply).
Hm, seems the Linux patches are out, so it could in fact be what's causing the issue, further investigation reveals.
have a link for the patches? I will keep an eye on the server tomorrow.
Here you go.
A friend gave the following advice:
I like using the Steem/Steem Dollar Ticker, which has also been displaying this message. Now I know why. I hope you get to the bottom of it soon.
me too.
it's broke and I miss it.
Not totally sure but I think it happens to me as well using an AMD's processor computer... I will check it and tell you
Thanks, let me know if you find anything. The problem is not at the client using the browser, but between the requests my server does to Steem content nodes, that's where the bottleneck is and from that part I get a lot of timeouts.
You can't imagine the frustrations most times I doze off
.. i find similar problem on steemit also ...this error remains for 10 minutes. whats that if you have any idea?
It's the same message I get and it may have many causes. But the fact that two clients (steem.supply and the official Steemit UI) are experiencing similar problems may indicate a more common glitch. Might be related to what I write about in the article.
i seem to be having a problem with steemd.com, is it related to the steem.supply?
i thought it was my computer timing cause of slow net but alas it seem am not the only one
I thought that Intel's bug was only a security flaw. Didn't know it also affected performance. Do you know which generation of chips this affects?
I currently have an old i3
That's not yet known, here's more info: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/261364-massive-intel-cpu-bug-leaves-kernel-vulnerable-reduce-performance
This affects all processors from the past decade.
The fixes has not rolled out yet, so it should not be affecting performance just yet.
There's 2 different security flaws. Meltdown impacts every single Intel processor since 1995 (basically everything since the Pentium 2) while Spectre impacts pretty much every processor from all companies (AMD, Intel, and even the ARM chips in phones, tablets, etc.)
Ohhh. Maybe so, because I've been trying it with my intel laptop and either I get 500 error message or it just loads really slow that I lose patience and give up.
had the same problem
I've noticed the reward ratio is no longer displayed. Is that intentional?
Yes, it was confusing. I decided to stick to the basics. :)
there should be a tab or something with that information, it was really useful
Thanks, will think about it.