Downloads EXTREMELY slow to start

[Apolymoxic]

Hi All!

First time posting here, so please go easy on me.
I did do my searches for this, but didn't find much in the forums. I also scoured the web, and while I came up with https://www.jdownloads.net/documentation-for-v3-9/general-items-v3-9/strange-faults-did-you-know-that#downloads-slow-to-start, it wasn't much help. I found my error logs and that did appear to be large and show some signs of a previous hacking attempt, it didn't show anything about JDownloads. To ensure that it wasn't the largeness of the file causing the download speeds, I removed it. Still no joy.

When I say that the downloads are extremely slow to start, I mean minutes to start. Sometimes the download will even timeout or get a 500 error. But the downloads are always slow to start... and it doesn't matter the file size - it could be a page or a book. Always slow to start.

I've done everything that I could think of to fix this, but nothing.

Anyone have any ideas??


TYIA!

[ColinM]

Hi
This is very strange.  Just some quick thoughts

Are you on a shared service website?  these hosts sometimes severly limit the allowed run time.  But I must say your delays seem excessive

Have you checked your location for web speed - there are numerous tools aailable publically

Check your php.ini file for the max_execution_time  - it is usually about 30 seconds

Do not like the sign that you think there has been a hacking attempt?  I would be inclined to re-install

part from the re-install think the other 'thoughts' are unlikely the problem

Will think on further

Colin

[Apolymoxic]

Hi Colin,

Thanks for responding. Here are the answers to your questions:

This is a dedicated server.
The web speed is fine. If I try to do a download by direct link, it works flawlessly every time. It's just the downloads that go through JDownloads - and there are a lot. Almost 3k.
The max execution time is set correctly (30 seconds)
The hacking attempt does appear to be someone trying a brute force attempt to get in, but was unsuccessful and hasn't happened in quite some time. The active users list has been cleaned and I believe this part to be resolved.


If I were to do an uninstall and a reinstall, would I lose my settings? Thing is, I didn't set this system up - I was handed it and had to learn a lot about the components and extensions in use. I am not sure I would be uninstalling and re-installing it correctly.


One more thing - I did update this from 3.2 (I believe that's where it was) to 3.9, in the hopes that that would fix the issue. It did not.


Thanks again for your reply!

[ColinM]

Hi
This is most likely something site specific
I will try to help
Will send you a PM (Private Message) as these are secure
ColinM

[sixdeuces]

Has there been any progress on this? I'm currently experiencing the same issue. Every download takes many seconds (anywhere from 5 to 12 in most cases) before the download proceeds. The rest of the page is quite snappy and tests fine on PageSpeedIndex.

[Apolymoxic]

Yes, in this case, it was a couple of things - there were too top level categories (all categories were the top most category, and there were a couple hundred of them), and the logs in the database.

I reorganized the categories to have top level down functionality.
For example, if I had categories called Home, Home Projects, Home Works, Home Items... all of these could be in one single category with Home as the top level and the rest as sub categories.

The second item was the database - there were over 3 mil lines of old download requests. When I cleared that out to only include this years downloads, things started speeding up considerably.

On top of all that, my site was being flooded with download requests. I was able to implement the captcha and that took care of fake download requests.

All three of these things made the downloads go SOOO much faster.

Kudos to Colin for helping me out so much. He found the first issue, and helped me implement the Captcha.

[sixdeuces]

AHA! The logs were the ticket. I had no idea that was even there and it had almost a million entries. I dumped it and everything is instantly better.

THANK YOU!

Note to developers: A way to manage or limit the logs from the admin interface would be a good improvement!

[ColinM]

As has been noted the Downloads log file is often the cause of delays in downloading.
In the jD 3.9 series the jD System Plugin has the abiity to limit the size of the log file.

It is not limited by the number of entries but by a duration of 93 days.  The value of 93 days is the maximum length of a 3 month period.
This duration is because jD can set a monthlly limit on the number of downloads by user group members. So jD needs a suficiently long log file to enact the limit properrly in all situations.

In earlier versions the default setting of this parameter in the System Plugin was zero which meant no actual limit in size.

Colin

[Apolymoxic]

As has been noted the Downloads log file is often the cause of delays in downloading.
In the jD 3.9 series the jD System Plugin has the abiity to limit the size of the log file.

This information is a little confusing because it's not a file... it's the DB itself. Once I cleared old logs (deleted the lines), the downloads started running better. This appears to be the same case for @sixdeuces as well.

When reading the docs, the logs are mentioned, but it specifically says to look for a file (as noted by trying to find the location of the file within the Joomla system settings). Finding and deleting any log file did not help. But clearing the DB did.

[ColinM]

Hi
The documentation hass been updated.  There are two potential causes, one is the Joomla! logging file
and the other is the jD database table abcde_jdownloads_logs, where abcde is your spefic site prefix in the database

see https://www.jdownloads.net/documentation-for-v3-9/general-items-v3-9/strange-faults-did-you-know-that#jdownload-logging

Colin

[Apolymoxic]

Hi
The documentation hass been updated.  There are two potential causes, one is the Joomla! logging file
and the other is the jD database table abcde_jdownloads_logs, where abcde is your spefic site prefix in the database

see https://www.jdownloads.net/documentation-for-v3-9/general-items-v3-9/strange-faults-did-you-know-that#jdownload-logging

Colin

Woohoo! Thank you, Colin! I am sure this will help someone else in the future.
And thank you, again, for helping me with my issue. I wouldn't have been able to solve it without you.

Scott