SPAM and occasionally slow server response

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reikiman
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Joined: Sunday, November 19, 2006 - 17:52
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SPAM and occasionally slow server response

One of the site members asked me this morning if VisForVoltage is hosted on a cheapo server that craps out every time the load goes past a threshold. Uh.. no.. it's not. Let's go over the arrangements again .. and I have a gripe about SPAM.

The site is hosted on a server which I rent. It costs nearly $100 per month to rent this server and I host several web sites on it. FWIW it's those other sites which pay for this server, while it seems that V takes much more effort to manage. Curious how that worked out.

It's true that the site becomes unresponsive irregularly. What usually happens is the memory runs out, or the disk fills up. Since I'm the only one who can reboot the server someone has to get my attention, unfortunately. Before someone suggests a shared hosting so that the shared hosting company takes care of disk space, memory, server reboots, etc, -- V is a very busy site with 2-3000 visits per day. I daresay that traffic level is beyond what can be successfully done on shared hosting.

Two of the other sites on this server are also rather busy, but not as busy as V is.

Disk space & memory -- It's been easy to find where the disk space goes. There are all sorts of log files squirreled away in remote corners of the server, and have a shell script that removes them. Over the weekend I found one which had grown to nearly 2GB ... Unfortunately I don't have much of a handle on why the memory regularly runs low.

What I found when I found that 2GB log file is that the email traffic on the server is very very very very active. Partly that's because this server houses two email discussion lists which have over 1000 members, meaning any email going to these lists gets sent out to 1000 people. However I've been watching the email maillog and see that 95% or more of the email arriving on the server is SPAM. The spammer tactic is to drop sh*tloads of email to random addresses hoping that some of the email will get delivered. Clearly if a big load of SPAM got dumped on the server all at once the server could get real busy handling email, and that could steal a lot of the memory.

HCT
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Joined: Wednesday, February 7, 2007 - 08:16
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Greatful to you , SPAM and occasionally slow server response

David

Think you are doing a fanstatic job considering with what you are working with and I assume very little compensation if any compensation at all.
I consider myself very lucky and grateful to be able to read all those comments made by people throughou the whole world and this with no cost at all .
I will attempt to make a small contribution as soon as my pay-pal account get a few dollars .Can you tell me what account mane to send it to ? .
I again thank you for your time and dedication to this labor of love .
Have attempted over the past 18 months to convey the importance of inquiring and getting impedance of cell , it appear I must be doing it wrong,since I seem to be the only one talking about it , do you have any recommendation how to convey the importance of it ?
Also when comparing cost of batteries power pack , feel that looking at cost per wh/hour , instead of volt , amp or batteries voltage will able us to get real cost effectiveness regardless of chemistries .
Regards

HEAT & LOSS & INEFFICIENCY RELATED DIRECTLY to IMPEDANCE

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Joined: Monday, October 1, 2007 - 10:04
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Re: SPAM and occasionally slow server response

I'd have to agree with HCT,
David you are doing an amazing job with the site.
Especially with everything that you have going on in your life as well, it is definetly a labor of love.
You have so much patience when you are dealing with site issues and individuals on the site.

I suggest to those who are having problems with the server, to also double check your internet browser by going to
tools and then internet options. It could be that your browser is running slow, or that you have things such as "cookies" enabled. Sometimes what I usually do, is I clear out all cookies and I also clean out all files,
and the forum does run better that way too. Other times it's your own PC that is running slow also
I defragmented (think that's the word) my computer and it's much faster when I go to webpages etc.

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