Re: Perlmonks site has become far too slow

Unfortunately for me, PerlMonks has been pretty much unusable over the last week.

I normally connect with https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=861371 — this takes me to my home node (but not logged in yet). After persevering today, I see Last here: indicated "a week ago".

I had tried several times and, thinking I'd just been unlucky and the site was down, gave up. Today I gave it some minutes; while still waiting, I pinged the org, com & net TLDs:

$ ping -c3 perlmonks.org
PING perlmonks.org (66.39.54.27): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=0 ttl=40 time=229.903 ms
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=1 ttl=40 time=230.685 ms
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=2 ttl=40 time=230.767 ms
--- perlmonks.org ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 229.903/230.452/230.767/0.390 ms

$ ping -c3 perlmonks.com
PING perlmonks.com (66.39.54.27): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=0 ttl=40 time=230.893 ms
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=1 ttl=40 time=230.677 ms
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=2 ttl=40 time=230.582 ms
--- perlmonks.com ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 230.582/230.717/230.893/0.130 ms

$ ping -c3 perlmonks.net
PING perlmonks.net (66.39.54.27): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=0 ttl=40 time=230.886 ms
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=1 ttl=40 time=229.992 ms
64 bytes from 66.39.54.27: icmp_seq=2 ttl=40 time=230.835 ms
--- perlmonks.net ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 229.992/230.571/230.886/0.410 ms
[download]

These looked reasonable. After checking these results, I found I had finally connected to https://www.perlmonks.org/?node_id=861371. I then proceeded to log in: this, again, took several minutes. Subsequent attempts to access various (unrelated) nodes either took a long time or I got a "Connection timed-out" message.

I'm hoping I can post this; regardless, I won't be spending any more time on this site today — I may give it another go over the weekend.

I'm using Firefox on MSWin10. I had updated earlier today to 142.0.1. Problems over the last week or so would have used the last one or two versions.

— Ken

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Re^2: Perlmonks site has become far too slow by hippo (Archbishop) on Aug 29, 2025 at 12:13 UTC
Yes, it has been particularly bad this week and as has been discussed in this and other similar threads it is driving genuine users away as a result. If there were an easy fix it would have been applied. If you want to protect your favourite websites the solution is not to use any LLM-trained products or services whatsoever and to encourage everyone you know to take the same stance. We all need to cut off the revenue streams for these pariahs as it is the only thing which matters to them. 🦛	[reply]
Re^3: Perlmonks site has become far too slow by syphilis (Archbishop) on Aug 29, 2025 at 13:58 UTC
If there were an easy fix it would have been applied. The thing that puzzles me is that, of all the websites that I regularly peruse, perlmonks stands out (and I mean really stands out) as clearly being the slowest and flakiest. Why is that ? What is the "feature" of perlmonks that makes it so extremely susceptible to these attacks ? Cheers, Rob	[reply]
Re^4: Perlmonks site has become far too slow by Corion (Patriarch) on Aug 29, 2025 at 14:06 UTC
Every page is several database accesses and several Perl `eval` calls. See DBIx::VersionedSubs for something like it, but not used on Perlmonks itself. I think converting to static files for (say) SoPW nodes for Anonymous Monk might reduce the load so that the site remains accessible for the human users. I'm thinking of measuring the impact of a `-f` call for every page load. Of course, using static files means that the nodelets are either stale or need to be removed from Anonymous Monks view of the site. Caching is of no use, since the bots are basically hitting all URLs with equal randomness, so there is no set of "hot" nodes.	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re^5: Perlmonks site has become far too slow by bliako (Abbot) on Aug 30, 2025 at 15:49 UTC
Re^5: Perlmonks site has become far too slow by NERDVANA (Priest) on Aug 30, 2025 at 14:31 UTC
Re^6: Perlmonks site has become far too slow by LanX (Saint) on Aug 30, 2025 at 17:38 UTC
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Re^5: Perlmonks site has become far too slow by LanX (Saint) on Aug 31, 2025 at 19:19 UTC
Re^5: Perlmonks site has become far too slow (caching) by LanX (Saint) on Aug 29, 2025 at 18:04 UTC
Re^2: Perlmonks site has become far too slow by kcott (Archbishop) on Aug 31, 2025 at 01:19 UTC
Thanks for all of the replies in the subthread that followed my post. I logged in today (Sunday 31/8/25 ~11am AEST) without experiencing any delays. I've been far less active on this site, over quite a few months, due to real life issues that I'm dealing with. Waiting several minutes for pages to load is indeed frustrating; however, I won't stop visiting for this reason — but, when slowness becomes a problem, I may cut my time here. I will keep persevering. :-) — Ken	[reply]