Courtney Huber

We have not toggled the plugin on and off during these periods and can’t really test that now that we have increased our database CPU to combat the issue. But we can’t keep that database CPU increased as it is quite expensive and shouldn’t be necessary if the plugin ran properly.

I have provided slow logs as requested so I’m not really sure what else you need from me, Nayeem. I will resend the slow errors from 5/29 to support@wpdownloadmanager.com, where you should be able to see the numerous logged errors calling out of the download-manager plugin and specifically mentioning mySQL queries, indicating these played a large role in the problems that were seen.

There isn’t really much more detail that we can provide that isn’t already in the logs. We saw these increases in slow errors happening with the spikes to 100% CPU usage within the MySQL layer. Over the course of the past 30 days, the download-manager plugin has been mentioned in over 44,000 slow errors, which well over 5x more than other plugins that were logging consistent slow errors. During these spikes there is usually a backlog of mySQL queries, however, those have to be caught in real time in order to know the specific query that’s happening. Since the database upgrade, we haven’t seen any of these large spikes, and simply reviewing the site, we’re not seeing a large amount of the same query running like what would have been happening previously. With that being said, the slow errors should provide enough information for your team to have an idea of what is going on with the plugin at that time, and while other plugins may be throwing some slow errors, it was only those that were logging thousands upon thousands.

Yes, I’ve already provided those logs. Consistently it is your plugins that seem to be throwing the errors…and huge amounts of them. We just had to increase our Database CPU on our site to handle these requests as the high traffic hitting downloads was maxing this out although it was already very high. This upgrade is fixing our issue in the short term, but the cost is high to have the database increased to this level, so it can only be a workaround. We have got to figure out a way to reduce the errors and slow load/download times coming from WPDM/PDF Viewer if we are going to continue to utilize your plugins as the core functionality of our website.

Once your team authority has received and you’ve had a chance to review, please update any findings as you are able. We are leaving your admin user account open as you continue to assist, but are required to report weekly to our team what progress you are making in order to keep that account open.

I just sent php error logs, slow logs and database layer CPU usage for the last 7 days via WeTransfer to support@wpdownloadmanager.com.

For reference, Flywheel’s database layers already have an extremely high CPU spec, so seeing the usage spiking to 100% sustained usage is a bit surprising. They suggest working with WPDM developers to reduce the database usage as a recommended first step as problems only occur when the usage is pinned at 100%, which you can see happens somewhat regularly.

I haven’t changed the login credentials. Please try again. Reminder that the login URL isn’t in the original request but in the response following. I can post it again below to keep it together.

For further information, our host (Flywheel) has been able to determine the following during our down periods:

We do see that the site is causing a sustained level of 100% CPU usage on the Database layer. When we dig into this further we can see that around the same time as these spikes happen, the plugin download-manager is throwing thousands and thousands of slow errors. Slow errors are processes that take longer than 5 seconds to complete. These errors can hog site resources and are a common suspect for performance and downtime issues. You may want to reach out to the developers with these errors as they may have more specific troubleshooting to mitigate these or identify any potential conflicts.

To give you an idea it has thrown 8500 of these errors in the last 24 hours. Another plugin, wpdm-pdf-viewer has thrown about 6400 and may also need further investigation. Do you have load testing abilities to try to simulate the experience we are having?

Yes I see it is working currently, but as mentioned, when we see an increase in site traffic it stops working. When you are getting in the site to troubleshoot is when our clients are offline and not doing business so it is hard to replicate the issue.

Also, I totally understand the need to make test packages to test, but when you are finished could you change them to draft? Our site is live to the public and I don’t want our test packages to be visible to users.

What further steps can we take to investigate since we are unable to get in touch with your team in the moment that we are experiencing issues?

Yes, we are still having issues. PDFs have not been loading for over an hour. In chatting our host, they see a massive amount of slow errors coming from download-manager and wpdm-pdf-viewer.

I do see v3.1.0 out now, so I’ll get it updated. Is that the version I should be expecting to see this change?