Post timeout only in private discussions

phloo

Flarum 1.4.1
PHP 8.0.22
MySQL 10.3.22-MariaDB

Since a few days we see lots of timeouts while replying in a private discussion.
It has more then 20 users - maybe thats the reason but still it seems like a flarum/extension bug.

Any idea why it is happening? The reply gets posted but the editor stays up with the loading modal.

clarkwinkelmann

phloo if it happens frequently enough, are you able to keep the browser development tools open and see if any javascript error gets logged?

Anything in the Flarum server-side log files?

Does any message appear on the screen or just the spinner stays forever without any red message?

If there are no errors apart from an HTTP connection expiration in the browser network console, it's possible your webserver doesn't keep the connection open long enough for Flarum to send email notifications using the sync queue. You might need to configure an async queue to reduce the time taken by the main request process and move it to the scheduler daemon.

luceos

My guess is on notification handling too. Using the database queue (or more instant redis queue) should resolve the issues you mentioned.

phloo

Currently it does not happen.
Maybe because the private thread is not that busy at the moment.
Will monitor the behaviour and check the XHR calls.

phloo

So, it is still the same problem with the big private discussion.
Sending the answer to /api/posts takes around 12-13 seconds.

It's is connecting to cloudflare but this should not be a problem (that connection works on every other thread)
The response header is more than 1000kb big (unusual?)

The second answer wasnt posted (error 504 gateway timeout)

This only happens in the private discussion (more than 30 recipients)

luceos

phloo have you set up a queue? What was inside the response header that it was over 1000kb in size?

phloo

hey @luceos - I am not sure how to set up the queue.
We are on a small shared server and only have SSH access.

I could not see what was that big because Firefox didn't show the complete raw header response.

luceos

phloo if you don't have any kind of queue set up, and there are over 30 emails to be sent through your email server, things are going to be delayed. Ping me on discord if you need help with the queue. The easiest one is the database queue but it isn't instant in pushing notifications out.

phloo

Shouldn't mail notifications be send AFTER a reply was posted? Because the response times out before even anything is shown.

Plus, I do not receive an email and probably most of the 20 users do not subscribe to a private discussion.
Mail handling should never interfere with frontend actions.

I will try to copy the xhr response next time.

luceos

phloo Mail handling should never interfere with frontend actions.

It won't, if you set up a queue. The easiest is the database queue.

The principle of web, if you send a xhr to the server is that it cannot do a fire and forget. Even with forked requests, once the (parent) request ends all execution is cancelled. That is why, at some scale, you either need to allow longer execution, reduce mail sending latency or implement a background process handling the mail (eg a queue).

phloo I will try to copy the xhr response next time.

Perhaps the logs have more information on what is going on.