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For over a year I have been struggling with the response speed on my Drupal v7.2x CMS install. Let me explain. I'm running Drupal 7.2x on an Ubuntu 12.10 (upgrade to 13.xx pending) for the purpose of webdev projects for pure Drupal CMS (though Symfony may follow also later).

I have never installed Xammp or any similar web services preferring to run on localhost with the LAMP (Apache etc) included with the Ubuntu install. It is becoming impossible to make even the smallest changes as the whole process seems to take the best part of 1-3 mins to write to the CMS and though I have persevered, it's become a serious pain!

I have asked similar on other stack exchanges I'm on with no real answer given (other than get a faster machine! It's the second one and it's a good spec machine..running PURELY Ubuntu and is not shared with any other OS). I have done all the normal things, cache clearings, reduction on logs and turned on/off every possible option 'button' in the backend of Drupal config. I want to stay with the Drupal framework.

The machine is my primary home workstation which I use for the normal 'everyday' things; browsing web, WebDev, Office etc and I installed the Ubuntu desktop.

To this some have said I should really go for a 'server' box, others has said that it could be I need something like Nginx; some have said it could be a DNS issue, which I have not implemented for fear of 'ballsing' up my current projects LOL, but the speed of re-writes takes ages and I really need some quality advice on what is happening behind the Linux scenes and how I can overcome these problems. I would prefer to stay with one single desktop workstation box as this helps my everyday working and simplifies my uploads to any future live sites to my webspace provider.

MAY I ALSO ADD: that whilst the page load/write is taking place during this slow period there is a significant amount of HD activity* as if data is being accessed, unlike a normal write (*of course this happens as part of data access, but not as massive as it happens here!) :-)

Edit (amend from my Comments):

The computer is an AMD X2 (3.2Ghz) 260; 16G Ram, Gigabyte (GA-MA68MT-D3P) Mobo, 3*500Gig HDs. 2*20" LCDs. I'll see if I can view System output.

I'm using mySQL (see below) but whilst I'm open to learning, I'm a bit wet across all areas (-: Server:Localhost via UNIX socket Server version: 5.5.32-0ubuntu0.12.10.1 Protocol version: 10 User: paulb@localhost MySQL charset: UTF-8 Unicode (utf8) Web server Apache/2.2.22 (Ubuntu) MySQL client version: 5.5.32 PHP extension: mysqli Documentation

May I add, that there are periods where it seems to post what I would say is acceptable in speed response, if I do a 'refresh' page (whether in Chrome or Firefox) it will take a perceived 200-300ms, then maybe some time later a mind boggling 1.5 mins. You can imagine trying to make multiple edits to a View setup, or Config change, I'm sitting here wondering if I should go make (another!) brew LOL

Just realised what I thought 'TOP' would be so I opened TERM and entered 'TOP'! If If put TERM in one LCD, and Firefox in other and 'reload' Firefox Drupal page I see activity in TERM, not sure to output it at the moment mind.

Jeff Schaller
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Paul B
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  • Please give us a specific example of a process that takes too long. Show the output of `top` while that process is running. DO you have enough memory? Is the CPU fast enough? How much of it is used? – terdon Oct 06 '13 at 15:42
  • The computer is an AMD X2 (3.2Ghz) 260; 16G Ram, Gigabyte (GA-MA68MT-D3P) Mobo, 3*500Gig HDs. 2*20" LCDs. I'll see if I can view System output. Not sure how to do 'TOP'? – Paul B Oct 06 '13 at 15:46
  • What database do you have backing Drupal? MySQL? My experience is that default MySQL configurations are incredibly bad. – kurtm Oct 06 '13 at 15:47
  • May I add, that there are periods where it seems to post what I would say is acceptable in speed response, if I do a 'refresh' page (whether in Chrome or Firefox) it will take a perceived 200-300ms, then maybe some time later a mind boggling 1.5 mins. You can imagine trying to make multiple edits to a View setup, or Config change, I'm sitting here wondering if I should go make (another!) brew LOL – Paul B Oct 06 '13 at 15:54
  • That sounds like you have something running that it hogging the CPU. `top` is a command line program. Just open a terminal, type `top` and hit enter. By the way, please don't add info in the comments, [edit] your post and add it there instead. Comments are hard to parse and can be deleted without warning. – terdon Oct 06 '13 at 16:36
  • OK - have added comments to bottom of O/P, (-: What info am I looking for in TOP then with a view to helping solve the performance issue? – Paul B Oct 06 '13 at 16:46
  • There is a script called tuning-primer.sh that I found very useful for making MySQL behave. It seems a version is maintained at https://launchpad.net/mysql-tuning-primer. I've found this script very useful for making MySQL run well. Most folks seem to throw faster hardware at the problem, but by default MySQL doesn't really use the resources it could. CMS systems tend to hit the database a lot, so I'm betting that is what causes your slowness. – kurtm Oct 06 '13 at 16:48
  • Thanks @kurtm for the lead, I'll take a look at it and see if it helps. – Paul B Oct 06 '13 at 17:15
  • Thanks to everyone's comments, but I'm still non the wiser! I have TOP running now and can see all the processes, but not sure what next. I can see that Varnish is running so I feel I don't have to worry about that. One thing I would like to add is that I have had issues with large .logs being created (having to manually delete with BleachBit) and I see in TOP that 'nullmailer-send' is running. Why do I need that when I'm not running any form of 'net' mailserver, after all it's only a 'home' computer? All my email is via gmail. – Paul B Oct 06 '13 at 19:02
  • This is issue is still ongoing! Here's execution time from Drupal 7: Page execution time was 26206.87 ms. Memory used at: devel_boot()=2.28 MB, devel_shutdown()=50.21 MB, PHP peak=51 MB. can anyone help, seriously, this Drupal website is taking months to do! – Paul B Dec 01 '13 at 21:53

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