On 2011-08-22, at 11:51 AM, Tim Worman wrote:
> On Aug 22, 2011, at 11:38 AM, Chuck Hill wrote:
> On 2011-08-21, at 12:43 PM, Tim Worman wrote:
>>> On Aug 21, 2011, at 11:52 AM, Chuck Hill wrote:
>>>> On 2011-08-20, at 4:02 PM, Tim Worman wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> Back in January I started this discussion on this same topic:
>>>>> 
>>>>> http://lists.apple.com/archives/webobjects-dev/2011/Jan/msg00224.html
>>>>> 
>>>>>>> I have an app that, during the course of normal usage, is starting 
>>>>>>> httpd processes on the server that instantly hit 100% CPU usage of one 
>>>>>>> core. This can happen multiple times during times when the app is under 
>>>>>>> heavier load. After some time I can have many httpd processes where TOP 
>>>>>>> reports each using 100% of a core. When I try to log into the app and 
>>>>>>> poke around to try and reproduce the issue, I am unable.
>>>>> 
>>>>> This is an update to my original post hoping to see if there are anymore 
>>>>> thoughts on origin. More recently, I have been able to reproduce the 
>>>>> issue in my own usage of the app - something I wasn't able to do before. 
>>>>> It seems to be easier to generate the issue now that there are more ajax 
>>>>> requests. The methods executed by these requests are not intensive or 
>>>>> long responses and should return a result in seconds. Some symptoms:
>>>>> 
>>>>> - When the actions are executed, busy indicators properly spin while the 
>>>>> browser awaits a response from the server. When the issue occurs, the 
>>>>> response never comes.
>>>>> - while continuing to await a response there is concurrently an httpd 
>>>>> process that pegs he processor at 100%
>>>>> - if I kill the process on the server, the browser immediately updates 
>>>>> properly as if the request had run properly
>>>>> 
>>>>> It's almost as if apache is somehow receiving an ill-formed request and 
>>>>> chokes on it. The problem is, there are no errors in the console or 
>>>>> anything strange in any apache logs. Has anyone ever seen behavior like 
>>>>> this or have any ideas as to how I could analyze it further? 
>>>> 
>>>> I've seen something like this.  It appeared that the woadaptor (i.e. 
>>>> mod_webobjects) did not believe that it had received all of the response 
>>>> from the application.  The app had nothing more to send and so the 
>>>> woadaptor just hung there waiting for data that would never come.  I did 
>>>> not track down why this happened, but it did seem to be load related.  My 
>>>> suspicion was that there is a concurrency bug in the woadaptor.
>>> 
>>> I'm really at a loss about what to do about it. It's only gotten worse as 
>>> I've included more ajax actions in my app - and, of course, I don't 
>>> experience this behavior in development. I just deployed a major update to 
>>> my app - pretty much unaware that a small problem was going to become a big 
>>> problem with the new version.
>>> 
>>> In one example, a have a calendar where clicking on a day simply calls an 
>>> AjaxUpdate marking that date as selected to the calendar. The result also 
>>> has to update the entire page though because other things on the page need 
>>> to change in those circumstances. This alone can cause the issue - but not 
>>> always. And it happens even when I'm the only logged in user - so the load 
>>> isn't high.
>>> 
>>> As one solution, I've considered rolling a custom apache instead of using 
>>> Apple's. But since the server also runs shibboleth, the setup isn't exactly 
>>> simple. But I'm really not sure how to ascertain if the problem is the 
>>> woadaptor or how I can settle it.
>> 
>> 
>> You could try the CGI adaptor and see if that makes any difference.  If it 
>> IS a bug in mod_webobjects...  that could be hard to find and fix.
> 
> Yeah, I'd say so. I don't even know C. :-)

Then extra, extra hard. I do know C, or did, but that code is little much for 
what I remember.  I can sort of follow how it works.  Finding bugs in it... not 
so much.


> I'm gonna pursue some other things first - like a possible hardware issue, or 
> other software. I'm going to try a deployment on another server and see if 
> that has any effect - also without shibboleth.

Is there a newer version of Apache or mod_webobjects you can try?  Are you 
using the builds from mDimension's site?


> Is there any chance that an issue with the id's of page elements could cause 
> an issue like this - say if they're dynamic and the response doesn't find a 
> matching id?

I don't think so.

Chuck


-- 
Chuck Hill             Senior Consultant / VP Development

Practical WebObjects - for developers who want to increase their overall 
knowledge of WebObjects or who are trying to solve specific problems.    
http://www.global-village.net/products/practical_webobjects







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