Moodle in English: Stats Cron Job Kills Server

Stats Cron Job Kills Server

by Glenn Black - Tuesday, September 12, 2006, 12:45 PM

I just installed a new instance of Moodle 1.6.1 (2006050510).

	Information	Report	Status
database	mysql	version 4.1.16 is required and you are running 4.1.21	OK
php		version 4.3.0 is required and you are running 4.4.3	OK
php_extension	iconv	is recommended to be installed/enabled

I turned on stats, and asked it to run at 1:05AM. Other than the Moodle site name, it was totally empty (0 courses, 0 students, 0 Teachers, 0 everything).

A panicked SYSOP froze my master acount & all my reseller accounts were knocked off when the Moodle cron job ran, taking 55% of server's CPU, then knocking down server (I'm not a popular fellow right now).

I've seen:

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=29794#139880

http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=52854 shows Moodle 1.6 had bug for Cron stats, which is fixed in latest version. Stats should be disabled in 1.6

http://moodle.org/bugs/bug.php?op=show&bugid=3977&pos=5

Can these explain killing server by cron job for stats on empty Moodle? Is it something else? I can't afford to experiment.

Glenn

Re: Stats Cron Job Kills Server

by Martín Langhoff - Tuesday, September 12, 2006, 1:39 PM

It may be that stats is misbehaving somehow in your case. However, as soon as you do have traffic, stats processing is going to get you kicked right out of the shared hosting machine.

Stats is not appropriate for shared hosting. It should be put in bold there

(IIRC, the wording was a bit stronger originally in the config page. Or perhaps it was just in my mind. In any case, shared hosting services monitor for heavy scripts and ban users accordingly. The stats pre-processing we do in cron is seriously heavy. Appropriate only for running on your own dedicated server, unfortunately.)

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Re: Stats Cron Job Kills Server

by Ralph Patterson - Thursday, September 28, 2006, 5:53 AM

Is it possible to turn the stats off to reduce the cpu load? ... and if so, how?

Thanks.

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Re: Stats Cron Job Kills Server

by Jeffery Watkins - Thursday, September 28, 2006, 6:41 AM

Update your site to latest version of Moodle and add this line to your main config.php file.

$CFG->disablestatsprocessing = true;

Jeff

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Re: Stats Cron Job Kills Server

by Ralph Patterson - Thursday, September 28, 2006, 8:09 AM

Thanks ... I've updated my config file and requested my host verify my cpu use age ... I'll report back the results as soon as I hear from them.

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Re: Stats Cron Job Kills Server

by Jeffery Watkins - Thursday, September 28, 2006, 8:55 PM

I should have said to also turn stats off in the Admin -> Variables... all the way at the bottom.

If you added the disable stats line to your config, you will need to remove it to make sure they are turned off in Variables.

Sorry for the confusion.

Jeff

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Re: Stats Cron Job Kills Server

by Ralph Patterson - Thursday, September 28, 2006, 10:06 PM

" I should have said to also turn stats off in the Admin -> Variables... all the way at the bottom.

If you added the disable stats line to your config, you will need to remove it to make sure they are turned off in Variables.

Sorry for the confusion.

Jeff"

Jeff ... I'm unable to find a switch in the Admin section for diabling stats.

Admin, Variable ... no switch labeled for statistics ... suggestions?

Thanks,

Ralph.

edit ... I removed the $CFG->disablestatsprocessing = true; from the config file and reloaded Moodle, Admin, Variables ... still nothing indicating a switch for statistics. Is there a way to ensure the config file has been reloaded?

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Hardware and performance

Stats Cron Job Kills Server