SEARCH{} SLOW

-- WesleyJacobs - 26 May 2017

Takes up to 4 to 6 times longer than old server Foswiki 1.1.9 on Ubuntu system with Apache 2.4. New system is Red Hat 7.3, Foswiki 2.1.3, with Apache 2.4, Perl 5.16.3 Have ran through performance tips with no improvement noticed. Any suggestions?

-- WesleyJacobs - 31 May 2017

Your Perl is too old. The main difference between 1.1.x and 2.x is unicode ... which had some serious performance fixes in the recent Perl releases.

-- MichaelDaum - 31 May 2017

The newer the perl the better. Regular expression performance on unicode strings (which foswiki 2.x uses internally) is significantly slower on older perl. 5.20 or 5.22 is recommended. We are running foswiki.org on perl 5.22.2. Ubuntu 16.04 LTS comes with 5.22.1. I think some of the big improvements came after 5.18. From perl change logs, 5.18 had a 30-40% boost in some regular expression unicode cases.

Are you using FastCGI or mod_perl?
Which search engine are you using? Forking or Pure perl.
Is it one particular search causing trouble or a general slowdown. If you've narrowed it down to one, can you post the search macro here?

-- GeorgeClark - 31 May 2017

mod_perl - pure perl (but I have tried forking as well) No, it's every search macro Other than that, the system functions very well.

-- WesleyJacobs - 31 May 2017

Ok, I will upgrade to perl - rh-perl524 and let you know.

-- WesleyJacobs - 31 May 2017

Ok, loaded rh-perl524 and it is operational. But, FoswikiServerInformation doesn't show the latest version. It still shows 5.16.3. Am I missing something? I ran "tools/rewriteshebang.pl" and updated.

-- WesleyJacobs - 31 May 2017

I don't know much about mod_perl, but I expect perl is actually loaded somewhere by apache, and not by the script shebang lines.

-- GeorgeClark - 31 May 2017

looks like maybe there is a specific mod-perl package? rh-perl524-mod_perl

-- GeorgeClark - 31 May 2017

Installed and using rh-perl524 and FoswikiServerInformation page still displays this:

General execution environment Area Details @INC Library Path /var/www/foswiki/lib/CPAN/lib /var/www/foswiki/lib /usr/local/lib64/perl5 /usr/local/share/perl5 /usr/lib64/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/share/perl5/vendor_perl /usr/lib64/perl5 /usr/share/perl5 . /etc/httpd UMASK 022 User userid: apache Your scripts are executing as this user Groups apache,apache Operating system Linux 2.6.32-642.1.1.el6.x86_64 (x86_64-linux-thread-multi) Perl version 5.16.3 (linux) File System Case Sensitive Engine Foswiki::Engine::Apache2::MP20

Not sure if this would be a possible cause of very slow searches. But trying to use a more updated perl version.

-- WesleyJacobs - 14 Jun 2017

The perl paths mentioned above are from the original perl version 5.16.3 (loaded with Red Hat)

-- WesleyJacobs - 14 Jun 2017

I really have no idea how to switch to a newer mod_perl on Red Hat. You might try asking on a Red hat forum. mod_perl can be challenging to deal with as it's compiled into an apache module.

-- GeorgeClark - 14 Jun 2017