voracity.net Site News/Updates

Wednesday, 1-Oct-2003
You may have recently noticed that things are starting to become quite slow at times. I'm aware of it and working on improving things. For the moment the statistic graphs are disabled. They will be enabled again after I've modified the code to be a little more efficient. There will also be some short downtime in the near future when I plan to upgrade MySQL, it shouldn't take more than 20-40 minutes though. As far as coping with the load, we're really CPU bound at this point. Currently we're processing about 45 hits per second, the vast majority of which are for the tracker of course. Apache and Boa are dishing out about 4,000,000 requests per day, and we've been hovering somewhere around 20,000 clients connected to the tracker.
Friday, 19-Sep-2003
I just completed a number of performance enhancements. Most of the static content is now handled by a secondary server (running the 'boa' httpd program) which leaves Apache free for all the dynamic content. Keepalives are off and lingerd is running for the Apache server, which means that fewer worker processes should be necessary. Additionally, all the PHP code is now pre-parsed and cached by the PHP Accelerator module. I tuned some of the MySQL parameters and created a few more indexes, which should speed up the database end of things. Finally, I changed the lifetime of graphs to 4 hours (it was 1.5 previously) which eases the load on the poor torstatsd process which was really getting behind trying to generate all those hundreds of graphs! (whew) In other words: The site should hopefully remain fast and responsive, even though the number of users connected continues to grow. Please let me know if you encouter any problems.
Monday, 15-Sep-2003
Rejoice! At some time in the last 24 hours we achived the mark of 10,000 simultaneous BT clients connected to the tracker. Not all were from unique IP addresses since some people have more than one client open, but it looks like about 75% are unique. You can check for yourself at the statistics link. Anyway, to celebrate this mark, I'm holding a special for the rest of the week: Half off on all items! Yes, you heard right, half price on everything! Oh, wait, it's free to begin with, nevermind. :-) On a serious note, I'm pleased with our current performance, but I have begun working on a plan that will speed things up more. I will be moving all static content off of the main Apache server and onto a small lightweight server that will live at static.voracity.net. Then I will turn off persistent connections on Apache and install lingerd, this will greatly improve Apache's efficiency. None of this should affect you or the way you browse the site in any way, other than you should find that things hopefully remain snappy as we continue to grow.
Saturday, 13-Sep-2003
Some users (<cough>hzsuperman<cough>) keep uploading files with no category and no description. I thought it was obvious that you weren't supposed to be doing this, but in case there's any doubt: STOP DOING THAT. I have changed the code so that it will not accept an upload unless you've picked a category and entered something for a description. I will just emphasize this again: Please enter a detailed description for files that you upload. Include details such as bitrate, codec information, length/number of tracks, subject matter, etc. For movies, consider including the film's plot summary from the IMDB; for music, consider including the album review from the AMG; for games, software, etc. consider copying a summary blurb from the .NFO file or from the manufacturer's web site. In other words, describe as best you can what it is that you're uploading, do not assume we know what it is.
Thursday, 11-Sep-2003
In case any of you are curious, there are some live statistics of the site available. As of right now we're at about 1.1 million hits per day, the vast majority of which are for the tracker. Interestingly, the majority of the bandwidth seems to be going to the "scrape" function. From inspecting the logs, I've determined that this is due to an over-anxious Azureus polling very often and requesting the full scrape info, as opposed to limiting the requests to a single torrent. I have spoken to Gudy and the next release should somewhat fix these concerns.
Wednesday, 10-Sep-2003
I have added links to forums at Filesoup to the top of the pages. Please use this forum to request files or ask for a reseed. Use this forum to discuss voracity.net issues or ask questions about this site. Please note that Filesoup has a number of other forums, if you require tech support or are having problems with a file. Just read the "sticky" posts at the top of each forum to determine what's on topic for each. You will not find a nicer, friendlier bunch than the Filesoup community, they are very helpful.
Sunday, 24-Aug-2003
A new feature now found on the 'Details' page of each torrent is the ability to view graphs of various statistics for each torrent graphed versus time. The first graph shows the number of seeders and the total number of peers (seeders + leechers.) The second graph show how the number of hits, views, and completes varies with time. (Remember that a "Complete" is when a downloader signals to the tracker that it has finished downloading the complete file.) The last graph shows the completion status of the leechers over time -- the minimum, maximum, and average leecher completion. These graphs are updated automatically approximately every hour. Please let me know if you have any questions or comments about this feature.
Friday, 22-Aug-2003
The tracker now refuses clients from machines with open proxies (HTTP, WinGate, SOCKS, etc.) This is for security and protection. If you are refused by the tracker, then you must secure your proxy and get delisted from the various blacklists before you can use this server. The refusal message tells you which blacklist you are on.
Monday, 18-Aug-2003
Implemented the Feature Request system. In a nutshell, you can vote up or down ideas for new features or changes to the site. You can also add your own idea, if there's something you'd like to see. The highest-voted ideas will be implemented first.
Sunday, 17-Aug-2003
I added a second alternative DB to be used for testing. It has a bunch of bogus data, useful for testing the user interface and searching, etc. I wanted to start adding real content and still be able to do tests with a "full" site. The peers/seeds listed are obviously fake as well, and none of it expires (so the fictional IP addresses remain even though they'd normally timeout.)
Friday, 15-Aug-2003
We are preparing to go live. I have been configuring the server, and everything's looking good.