Hey All, I am currently trying to run a wiki server off of a media temple host server. On this host I also have a website and a forum that run perfectly. However my wiki runs a bit slow from time to time and will sometimes render without CSS. Is this something Mediawiki defaults to when being handled by slow servers? Just curious if anyone else has had this problem before, I can't find anything on Google.
Cheers
If CSS is not applied sporadically, then it's some issue with load.php. The server's error log may provide more information if there are errors or segfaults.
On MediaWiki 1.22, there's a problem with the Job queue that may cause slowness.
Just a bump for the same issue. Everything running fine on a gridserver account for other types of installations, but MediaWiki runs very slow & doesn't render the CSS most times.
Without any more info about what does the error logs say, there's noting more we can do.
MediaWiki is known to run slowly when caching is not enabled. See manual:$wgMainCacheType. The job queue issue can also cause problems. But yes, there's lots of potential causes, hard to know without knowing more about your situation.
Bump. Same issue here. I've moved several sites recently to a media temple grid server, including many joomla ones and 7 mediawikis. All mediawikis were 1.21.2 and now some are upgraded to 1.23.0. All joomlas still work fine. Wikis used to work fine for years in the old server but now they all have the same issues: very slow page loading and sometimes no css or partial css loading, especially the ones that load css from wiki pages (like from MediaWiki:Common.css etc). (The issue seems to appear more often right after editing pages).
The server's error log is clean. The only errors it shows is about robots.txt like this one: [Sun Jun 22 16:59:30 2014] [error] [client 157.xxx.xxx.162] File does not exist: /home/xxxxxx/domains/xxxxxxx/html/robots.txt
I've also tried php debugging but no error messages were shown.
When this issue appears I check the job queue (with /api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=statistics) and the result is always: jobs="0"
I used to have the default cache settings (i.e. CACHE_NONE which as I said worked fine in the old server). I've also tried $wgMainCacheType = CACHE_DB; (which is the only one of these that works) but the issue remains.
For slownesss, you may try to set up Profiling, to track down what methods MediaWiki spend most of the time.
Also, during page loads, it would be useful to monitor CPU and memory usage, of both the server and the database, to detect bottlenecks or problems with other processes.
Resolved!
Short answer: Media Temple Control Panel > PHP Settings > Change from FastCGI to CGI (stable)
Long answer:
This is the response I've got from Media Temple support:
Ioannis,Thank you for contacting (mt) Media Temple.
The mod_fcgid errors are caused by a PHP script on your website taking longer than 40 seconds to complete. If the site is running PHP as a FastCGI application, then there is a hard limit of 40 seconds for your scripts to complete, which cannot be edited on the GRID. Unfortunately, there isn't much that we can do about this issue in way of support, since the issues are directly related to the coding of MediaWiki.
You can try running PHP as a CGI module for your MediaWiki domains to see if that works for you, since it would then not be subject to the 40 second timeout setting for FastCGI. Here's a KnowledgeBase article to assist you with changing your PHP version on the GRID:
How can I specify the PHP version on the Grid?
http://kb.mediatemple.net/questions/244
If you require any further assistance, please do not hesitate to contact us by replying to this support request, or by calling us at 877-578-4000. We are here 24/7 to assist you. Thank you for continuing to use (mt) Media Temple for your hosting needs.
William T.
Customer Support @ (mt) Media Temple
877-578-4000
@MediaTempleHelp
