Death Of A Dolphin Site

Hi friends...

I am forced to shut down my dolphin site because of memory problems. I dont have any traffic to my site. There are some members but 99% of them are inactive. But still I couldn't figure out how it happens. The site gives an error similar to the one shown below:

---------------------------------

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 7340032) (tried to allocate 9 bytes) in /home/xxxxxx/public_html/templates/base/scripts/BxBaseSearchResultSharedMedia.php on line 91

--------------------------------

If I refresh the site, I get different different file paths and line numbers in the above message. But the meaning is same "Fatal error: Out of memory". The site is running in a VPS where some other simple websites also there. The total memory was 512 but I added 128 also after started to see this problem. The problem affects other sites and emails as well. Thats why I decided to kill this site. I spent a lot of time and money on this site and it is really a heart breaking decision for me but I have no choice.

This is the message I get from my host every time when I ask help:

-------------------------

Your server was hung and we have restarted it and domains are loading fine now. On further checking we could find some memory fail counts on your server, so that please upgrade your server for a permanent fix on this.

-------------------------

They have posted this message at least 50 times for me! Now I feel shy to ask again.

What is the minimum memory requirement/server requirement to run a dolphin site? All of you have 1GB memory?

If you know any solutions or ideas, please advise. Thanks in advance.

I'm getting the same messages: Fatal error: out of memory ...

I've been told that I have to increase my php memory limit to at least 128 mb.

I did try this and it didn't work for me...but maybe it will work for you.

Fortunately these errors only show up on a few places.

My question is this: If my php memory limit has always stayed the same, then why would these errors suddenly start popping up?

My hosting company say it is a issue with the software I am using.  I will keep investigating and if I find a solution I will post it here.

I'm having the same problem guys

if I don't fix this soon I will look for another script and shutdown Dolphin two

because I been wasting a lot time and money like aneesh this need to be fix before a lot of people do the same

128M is the minimum memory required. But i find dolphin runs best when this is set at 256M. And this is a PHP.INI setting.

And please note. There is a big difference between 256 and 256M. One simple typo can mess everything up.

The thing is, on a VPS or Dedicated server there should be no excuse for this. The proper place to make the change on those types of hosting environments is directly in the primary php.ini file in the servers etc directory.

Now on a shared hosting environment you need to force over rides with php.ini files in the sites directory or override in the .htaccess file if the hosts configuration allows it. The problem is, with some hosts this is not good enough. Sometimes a php.ini file is needed in pretty much all of dolphins directories which is a pain in the ass to setup.

I would drop a host in a heartbeat if the requirements were like that, or the host was not flexible enough. I would also drop any host that moves blame to the script. As they apparently are not a dolphin certified host. Even if they claim they are.

A lot of things effect how much memory you need, and most of them are related to uploads. The bigger the files uploaded, primarily photos and videos, the more processing overhead required.

I personally have my memory limit set to 256M and have not ever received a memory error since i set that limit.

I received that error once, but it was because of a never ending loop in a query to the database.  Basically a scripting problem, and not a server issue.

That might help somone.

Hi Deano where I can go and change this to 256M

Thank's

Hi Deano,

Thank you very much for the detailed reply.

In my php.ini, I can see the memory_limit = 128M for both local and master values. Is that the one you say to change to 256M?

Yes you need to increase this one.!!

Is this what the php.ini file should look like?

register_globals=Off
magic_quotes_gpc=On
allow_url_include=Off
upload_max_filesize=300M
post_max_size=300M
max_input_time=3000
max_executi alt=3000
memory_limit=256M
short_open_tag=On

Should anything here be changed?   Should anything be added?

I have mine set to 512M on my VPS and I have never experienced a memory issue. I've experienced lots of other crap, but at least I can say I don't have this particular problem, lol.

Now you have the same as me and had never a memory problem, so this must be enoch.

Wow

I'm going to set my to 4GB then

Hi,

I changed the memory limit to 256M and just now I got a Cron Daemon email from my vps as shown below:

---------------------------------------------

<br />

<b>Fatal error</b>: Out of memory (allocated 524288) (tried to allocate 4864 bytes) in <b>/home/xxxxxx/public_html/inc/classes/Thing.php</b> on line <b>14</b><br />

----------------------------------------------

Now what should I do? Change it to 512M? Any ideas?

Are you editing the master php.ini file in the etc directory on the server? or a php.ini file in your dolphin folder. Becuse cron uses the master in the etc directory on the server.

You have a VBS, you should be changing the master. Manually. Not using cpanal to do it if you have cpanal. I don't trust it to edit the proper file.

It seem odd that this should be occuring.

Was this after a video upload or something?

But yea, up it to 512M

You or your members must be uploading some huge stuff.

Hi,

I am editing the master php.ini file. Actually I am not doing it but my host. Now they increased that to 512M.

I am not uploading anything. members are mostly inactive. The max upload limit was set to 100M.

Thanks for the reply.

Right now my memory_limit for Local Value is set to 512M

However, my memory_limit for Master Value is only 128M

Do I need to also increase this master value???

OK. One other thing i just thought of.

This is a VPS not a dedicated, so a VPS is assigned a certain amount of virtual memory that would be like the amount of install physical memory on a real dedicated server.

How much virtual/physical memory did your ISP assigned to your VPS?

Unless you have a VPS or dedicated you might not be able to. Thats why i don't like shared hosting, but as long as dolphin uses the local value there should not be a problem. But it might be a problem from cron which may not use the local value.

It is 512M.

I hope you not confusing VPS virtual memory with what is set in php for what it is allowed to use, but if that is all your ISP assigned, then that could explain a lot of your problems.

Most standard computers nowadays have 1-2 gig installed. A server with only 512 meg of memory stinks. The operating system itself will use quite a bit of that.

I pay $32/mo for this VPS with 512M memory and 15GB HDD space. Their basic package is coming with 256M memory. If 512M is not enough for a vps to run then how the 256M vps will work?

This question I asked when I posted this thread..... everybody run their dolphin sites on 1G or higher memory vps?

The world will be a happy place in only people were more generous.

If you are so stuck with your server and need a better and faster space to host your dolphin, you can contact me via my site www.cmsintegration.info and I will gladly provide a space for you until you are ready to purchase a better server

For some scripts a 256M VPS is fine. But not for dolphin. I don't even think a 512M VPS is suitable for dolphin. At least not a production site loaded with all modules.

But that's just my opinion. I do believe the hosting makes a big difference with dolphin.

I run a real dedicated server, but my costs are better than 3-4 times what you're paying. But that was my choice.

And yes, i have at least a gig of memory, maybe 2. i can't remember.

It means that you have php setting to use not more than 7Mb by any php script (7340032 bytes / 1024 / 1024 = 7 Mb)

Your another error:

<br />

<b>Fatal error</b>: Out of memory (allocated 524288) (tried to allocate 4864 bytes) in <b>/home/xxxxxx/public_html/inc/classes/Thing.php</b> on line <b>14</b><br />

Means that you have only 0.5 Mb for php (524288 bytes / 1024 / 1024 = 0.5 Mb)

Above settings are extremely low, Dolphin requires to set it to 128 Mb.

I suppose that you incorrectly edit your php.ini file - please make sure that you have set memory_limit exactly to 128M, or php settings are stored in some another file, but not in the file you are changing, then I suggest to search for memory_limit php setting in the following locations:

- check other location for php.ini file, phpinfo() can help in finding where php.ini file is located. Also it maybe custom php.ini per directory. Another location of php settings can be in .htaccess file, check .htaccess files too.

- in some cases php cron job is running with different php.ini file, then I suggest to change cron job string and point the same php.ini file you are using for webpages (you can get this path on phpinfo() page). For example change old cron job, which looks like this:

cd /path/to/your/dolphin/files/periodic; /path/to/php/binary/php -q cron.phto this one:

cd /path/to/your/dolphin/files/periodic; /path/to/php/binary/php -q -c /path/you/get/from/phpinfo/page/php.ini cron.php

please note: you need to change path to actual files

Hi AlexT,

Thank you very much but I can't understand your comments completely.

This is my current cron job:

Could you please tell me what change I should make?

Just a suggestion:

Can you try changing your cron job to this instead and see if it works:

/usr/local/bin/php -q /home/xxxxxx/public_html/periodic/cron.php

Notice the word 'local' has been added.

What AlexT wants you to do is add the path to the php.ini file to the cron job line.

So your current /usr/bin/php -q /home/xxxxxx/public_html/periodic/cron.php

Becomes this. /usr/bin/php -q -c /path/you/get/from/phpinfo/page/php.ini /home/xxxxxx/public_html/periodic/cron.php

Where path/you/get/from/phpinfo/page is the path to the php.ini file as shown by phpinfo.


The part i don't get is that this is a VPS, and if your editing the master pnp.ini file then this should be completely unnecessary. So you also said you have your host making that change. So this leads me to believe that your host is a total idiot and does not know what they are doing. Meaning that if your host cannot make a simple memory change to php then you should be finding a new host. I have already lost faith in them, and it's not even my server.

First of all, You cannot run dolphin on any web host. Because dolphin needs some mandatory configurations. You can have a VPS or a Dedicated Server to run dolphin. That would do better. In such environments, you can configure the server as per your needs(dolphin configuration).

One of the issues I've been getting is if a member tries to retrieve a forgotten password.  If this member enters his/her username and then the captcha, this is what he/she will see:

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 45088768) (tried to allocate 71 bytes) in /home/ustillup/public_html/inc/profiles.inc.php on line 391

I've been discussing this issue for about a week with my hosting company.  This is there last comment on the issue:

"According to the server admins I had testing this issue, the local 512MB limit *is* being applied, however your site script itself seems to have a hardcoded memory limit, which is lower than the 512MB limit you're trying to use, and that seems to be the cause of your error.

We are not able to determine where in your script this limit is, or how to remove it. I recommend contacting your site script developer for further support."

There is no hardcoded memory_limit in dolphin.

Hi,

After paying more than 2,000 USD for license, modules and customizations; it is very hard to say that I will migrate my network to other platform if the performance issues are not solved in version 7.0.3

Best Regards,

OKatanani

Hi,

I edited my cron command yesterday and now again cron daemon email!

------------------------------------------------------------

<br />

<b>Fatal error</b>: Out of memory (allocated 524288) (tried to allocate 4864 bytes) in <b>/home/xxxxxx/public_html/inc/classes/Thing.php</b> on line <b>14</b><br />

------------------------------------------------------------

Then check that php.ini file yourself. It's still not setup right.

Look for the memory_limit setting. Should be memory_limit=256M

Look for more than one. If one was put at the top of the file, and another one exists somewhere below it, then the second one will over ride the first. So make sure there is only one entry.

This problem is still the memory limit setting in php which has not been done right.

Memory_limit was 128 and now I changed that to 256M. There is only one entry for the memory limit.

The cron failure email I received only once. The site is still working fine.

aneesh,

You're having better luck than me.  I still can't find any location where my memory limit hasn't been changed.  I also keep bugging my hosting company and they can't find anything either.

If there is no hard coded memory_limit in dolphin, then perhaps this memory error can also be caused by something else.

Or maybe I'm simply not seeing something...

Cron jobs fails and getting the bloody cron daemon email every minute.....

Server hung.... vps needs a reboot.

Dolphin script - The excellent script I have ever seen!!!

Most problems are related to server settings. 
If you have no root access to your server, then every change on the servers main php.ini has to done by the provider. 
There are also servers, who have limits on several settings.  So try to find out what you can do yourself and what you need to got assist form the server owner (provider).


Success.

Hi Killer...

I have root access to my server. My host is blaming me and asking to upgrade the server. Here is the latest reply from them:

*****************************************************************************************

Hello,

Please note that your server have fail counts on many of the memory parameters and once memory hits its limit it will try to free up some memory by stopping some services. The memory outages happen since the processes running on the VPS exceed the current allocation of resources. Once the memory usage goes out of the allocated, it will kill the process to make the server running and also mark a fail count at the resource counter. We will not be able to predict the usage of your server at the time of sign-up and hence will not be able to give you the exact amount of ram you require. Once you start getting these errors, you will need to go for an upgrade so that your server will have more resources to prevent services from failing. For further details please contact our sales/billing department at sales@slhost.com and they will help you further on this. Please have a look on table below and note the fail counts on your memory parameters.
============================
-bash-3.2# cat /proc/user_beancounters
Version: 2.5
uid resource held maxheld barrier limit failcnt
6052: kmemsize 8618300 8762537 65536000 65536000 0
lockedpages 0 0 256 256 0
privvmpages 175862 178321 262144 262144 1830047
shmpages 143 143 21504 21504 0
dummy 0 0 2147483647 2147483647 0
numproc 107 108 600 600 20100
============================

Regards,
Frank
http://slhost.com

*****************************************************************************************

Anybody can help me to solve this problem? I am not asking a free service. I am ready to pay. Please PM me. Thanks.

Don't know what your site is based on, videos, chat oe so on.
But normally on a vps must Dolphin running smoothly. If you have a VPS with low memory, then you will come in problems. So far I can see this is the case in your situation. 

Maby is the best to look for a another provider, who can sale you a real VPS who have the Dolphin standards.

Any suggestion for cheap and best?

Then nobody really knows the exact reason of this stupid error!

So the death is almost confirmed. Thanks.

Finally..... My host come up with the solution!!!

----------------------------------------------------------

Hello Aneesh,

The memory usage is due to the execution of red5 on your server and it needs minimum of 1GB,so either to upgrade the VPS or stop the red5 inorder to overcome this issue.There is nothing much done with this issue from our end.Please Lets us know if you need any further assistance.

----------------------------------------------

Any comments???

Your host is telling you that to use RMS, you'll need to upgrade to a VPS with 1GB of memory of more. Either that, or you can stop using it. Alternatively, you can purchase RMS hosting from other providers, such as Terabyte Hosting Solutions.

OMG I just noticed this thread. Of course you need a decent about of memory to accomodate your dolphin and the required red5 server as the java binaries needed for red5 need a around 600 or 700 megabytes of your server memory to start with. That is for tomcat flavour of apache which I use. Half a gig of server memory will not cut it!  I pay about $59 per month for my VPS and I get 150 gigs of hard drive space with 2 gigs of memory so it zips along happily with a few D6 and D7 websites on it.

@ Deano: If you need to place a php.ini file in each sub directory of your website it is really not that much hassle. I use this command from the comand line to do it: find . -type d -exec cp php.ini {} ;

Okay it will copy it to a few directories that you do not want it in like the flash banner reloader directory but that is about all I think.

Oh yes. I gave you the command to put the php.ini in each sub-directory but of course how do you remove it from each sub-directory? You do it with this command: find . -type f -name "php.ini" -exec rm -f {} ;

Thank you for the nice recommendation (terrabyte).

500$ for setup and 350$ per month! what the hell is that? I dont think they have any customer....

I have no php.ini file in my .etc folder.  Do I need to create one or is one supposed to already be there?

If your refering to the servers etc directory, then no. If it's not there then it may be elsewhere. Where it is depends on what version of linux the server is running.

the etc directory is the common location for Redhat, CentOS and other distros based on redhat.

Hi All Contributors,

Please tell me... what is the final outcome of this post? My understanding is...

NOBODY CAN RUN A DOLPHIN SITE SMOOTHLY WITHOUT A MINIMUM OF 1G RAM

Is that correct?

I still can run my forum still giving me the same pc shit Fatal error out of memory in the forum

my host set the php_memory to 128 still the same shit

I run my Dolphin on a shared hosting and have my rms on another hosting. My site runs fast and smooth with NO memory issues. I have just had a open house in chat rooms and had no issues with it what so ever. Now I do not have a large site, 56 members so far, but no one seems to have issues, even had 1 ask me where my hosting was as my site loads so fast and his lags. Maybe later when I get more of a constant flow I will have to upgrade, but untill then I will stay with the cheap route tell all bugs are worked out. I figure that will be another few years..lol

Just for info:

my hosting is 1and1 and I was getting memory problems because my php.ini with memory_limit=256M was not in EVERY folder.

Once I copy my php.ini to every folder then I didn't get this error email anymore.

Not in every folder??? php.ini is server side, it shouldn't need to be in every folder.

Your hosting company sound like a complete bunch of morons if they couldn't get this right months ago for you. Glad to hear it's sorted now though.

Aneesh, why don't you call Rob at JoomByte and let him look after it for you. They seem to be doing just fine with a lot of websites and are specialists at hosting the Dolphin software.

I am not a techie guy, so that is my 2cents worth, cause I can feel you frustration.

Well.....

I'm aware that this thread is almost 2 years old but I'm having the identical problem with my VPS. Only difference is I have 2GB RAM and my php.ini is set to 512MB.  I upped it to 1024MB for a short while and it made no difference so I changed it back to 512.

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 11272192) (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) in /home/admin/public_html/inc/classes/BxDolCalendar.php on line 132

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 11010048) (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) in /home/admin/public_html/templates/base/scripts/BxBaseTags.php on line 161

Cron Daemon	4:00 PM (1 hour ago)
to me

 Mel, this is a total shot in the dark but are you using any of the php accelerators? (xcache, APC, eaccelerator)

The reason I ask is I used to have a VPS with only 1GB of ram and I had 30 or 40 sites running on it and the ONLY time I got out of memory errors was when I tried to use those. 

Well.....

I'm aware that this thread is almost 2 years old but I'm having the identical problem with my VPS. Only difference is I have 2GB RAM and my php.ini is set to 512MB.  I upped it to 1024MB for a short while and it made no difference so I changed it back to 512.

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 11272192) (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) in /home/admin/public_html/inc/classes/BxDolCalendar.php on line 132

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 11010048) (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) in /home/admin/public_html/templates/base/scripts/BxBaseTags.php on line 161

Cron Daemon	4:00 PM (1 hour ago)
to me

 

 

 

 

                <div style="border:2px solid red;padding:4px;width:600px;margin:0px auto;">
                    <div style="text-align:center;background-color:red;color:white;font-weight:bold;">Error</div>
                    <div style="text-align:center;">Database connect failed</div>
                            </div>

Fatal error: Call to a member function getRow() on a non-object in /home/admin/public_html/inc/utils.inc.php on line 421

 

This is just a small sampling of what I get during a day.

Any help would be warmly welcomed.

Thanks,

Mel

I wish it were that easy but no I'm not running any accellerators (that I know of anyway)

Thanks for the shot in the dark though :)

 It looks like 512M is not applied everywhere, what I see from error is that limit is about 11M (11272192 / 1024 / 1024 ~ 10.75 M) 

Well.....

I'm aware that this thread is almost 2 years old but I'm having the identical problem with my VPS. Only difference is I have 2GB RAM and my php.ini is set to 512MB.  I upped it to 1024MB for a short while and it made no difference so I changed it back to 512.

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 11272192) (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) in /home/admin/public_html/inc/classes/BxDolCalendar.php on line 132

Fatal error: Out of memory (allocated 11010048) (tried to allocate 30720 bytes) in /home/admin/public_html/templates/base/scripts/BxBaseTags.php on line 161

Cron Daemon	4:00 PM (1 hour ago)
to me

 

 

 

 

                <div style="border:2px solid red;padding:4px;width:600px;margin:0px auto;">
                    <div style="text-align:center;background-color:red;color:white;font-weight:bold;">Error</div>
                    <div style="text-align:center;">Database connect failed</div>
                            </div>

Fatal error: Call to a member function getRow() on a non-object in /home/admin/public_html/inc/utils.inc.php on line 421

 

This is just a small sampling of what I get during a day.

Any help would be warmly welcomed.

Thanks,

Mel

Can you tell me where else it needs to be applied?  I'm desperate 

You sould ask by your Provider.

As I wrote here before, when I was by 1and1, the php.ini had to be in every folder. Very strange but it was like that.

Then when I moove to Tmdhosting, I got this error again. 

So I wrote a support ticket by Tmdhosting and they found out that I forgot to delete some php.ini in all this folders, 

If your host have a good support, they will find the solution.

I readed all of this post and I haven't seen anyone mentioned that after every change of php.ini file the web server must be restarted so that the change  can take effect .

Normal instalation of php is located here:

/etc/php5     (if version of php is 5xx)

than you have two subfolders in php5 folder :

 cli and cgi folders

You must know what exstension is using your web server in order to adjust the right php.in file.

Just as a hint.

regards

Mayki

 Hi,

I have been using RMS service from an external source for the last 1 year and they charge me $24 per year. I am completely happy with that and there are no problems of "Out of memory" errors now.

 Can you tell me who the service provider is. That sounds like the perfect cure to my illnes :-)

 Mel,

You don't need to pay someone for external RMS if you have a VPS. The only time you would need to do this is if you're using shared hosting and your host doesn't have RMS.

I had RMS plus a TON of websites and my VPS only had 1GB of ram and some of the sites had moderate traffic... no problems. Alex was correct, your error is showing only 11gb of ram is allocated. Take a look at "host tools" in the dolphin admin and see what phpinfo is showing for the memory limit.

It appears that it's268MB?  Not sure how to read this.... 

Dolphin_Jay said he made a few changes and I haven't seen the "out of memory" problems for the last couple of days.  

Software requirements

• PHP: 5.3.16 - WARNING (your PHP version is outdated, upgrade to the latest 5.4.8 maybe required)
  • allow_url_fopen = On - OK
  • allow_url_include = Off - OK
  • magic_quotes_gpc = Off - OK
  • memory_limit = 268435456 - OK
  • post_max_size = 838860800 - OK
  • upload_max_filesize = 524288000 - OK
  • register_globals = Off - OK
  • safe_mode = Off - OK
  • short_open_tag = On - OK
  • disable_functions = - OK
  • php module: curl = curl - OK
  • php module: gd = gd - OK
  • php module: mbstring = mbstring - OK
  • php module: xsl = xsl - OK
  • php module: json = json - OK
  • php module: openssl = openssl - OK
  • php module: mysqli = mysqli - OK
  • php module: ftp = ftp - OK
• MySQL: 5.5.27-cll - OK
• Web-server: Apache/2.2.22 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.22 OpenSSL/1.0.0-fips mod_auth_passthrough/2.1 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635
  • rewrite_module - OK
• OS: Linux vps.rmjvps.com 2.6.18-274.18.1.el5.028stab098.1 #1 SMP Sat Feb 11 15:30:41 MSK 2012 x86_64

 happy-hosting.com

 Yeah it looks good. Jay knows his stuff, you should be good to go :-)