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Jeremy

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I made a pretty dramatic change to the system today as part of our continuing migration to a web server farm. The map server now runs a bit differently, though you won't notice if I did my job right. Also, images are now set up to function on their own machine, but we'll be carefully watching it for a while before we actually make that change.

 

Additionally, I changed some database queries for cache pages so they should generate faster.

 

Bottom line, other than states being listed as part of logs, there should be no real significant changes to the site, except on the back-end. If you notice anything odd, let me know.

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Well, there's definitely something a little screwy with image uploads, particularly on the benchmark website. Please check out this forum thread for the gory details. Whatever software is being used to resize images for storage is no longer allowing for the option of not resizing image files that are smaller than 125KB.

 

Thanks for looking into this situation. I'm holding off log entries until this can be fixed. (Oh, and BTW ... it sure would be appreciated if the limit was bumped up a little higher, say to 150KB. :) )

 

Cheers ...

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Perhaps the size of the image is calculating larger than before. My image is at 105k.

Nope, that's still not it. I just tried to upload the same 121KB 650x490 image to LY1158 and it's still being downsized automatically. All afternoon yesterday I'd been entering BM logs and uploading photos and everything worked fine until I got to this last log and the final three photos. Something had to happen in the late afternoon on Monday.

 

Please also note what Zhanna had mentioned in her reply to the Image Upload Problem thread on the benchmark forum. Specifically that in her tests with a series of images, the ones with file sizes 108KB or less had retained their original dimensions. In this case, your 105KB image fell below this threshold and as such was not resized smaller. Am I making sense?

 

Thanks for checking into this. Hopefully the solution is something simple.

 

Cheers ...

Edited by Rich in NEPA
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Jeremy, I just now uploaded a series of test photos a highly detailed scene, with dimensions of 650x490 pixels, and for the test I increased the level of JPEG compression incrementally. (See: LY1158)

 

At a level of 19% (which for this particular wooded scene yields an image file size of 117KB) the uploaded photo was automatically downsized to 600x452. At a level of 20% (which yields an image file size of 113KB) the original image dimensions are preserved. As you can see, file size of 117KB or greater, the image gets made smaller. File size 113KB or less, image is not resized.

 

Since early January, when you allowed us the option of preserving image dimensions if we kept the file size below 125KB, until yesterday I was able to upload images at up to 124KB without the site automatically downsizing them. As you can see, at this moment today I have to increase JPEG compression dramatically in order to reduce the file size below 113KB before the site will preserve my original dimensions.

 

I don't know what changed since yesterday. If you just increased the upload limit, it still doesn't match the previous limit of 125KB that you gave us in January.

 

Might I ask what you have the limit set at right now?

 

Thank you.

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I downloaded for print, a simple Benchmark site. Should have been 2 pages of print. I got seven pages. The last five pages of which were (to my untrained eye) gobblety gook. Never had that happen before. I'll try agin later to see if it was an anomollay or not.

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With regards to the state/country listings in the individual logs, perhaps for locationless caches it could say "locationless" instead of whatever state was chosen as a default...

 

Also, on a completely different topic, for archived cache pages it seems redundant to say also "this cache is temporarily unavailable." It should be one or the other, no?

 

Cheers and keep up the great work,

Todd (IntotheWoods)

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Hi Jeremy,

 

since a few days I am noticing the following "problem" when I do a country search (e.g. like this one) or a PQ preview and then view one of the cache pages.

 

When I then hit the back button in my browser (IE6) to get back to the list it asks to explicitily reload the page (repost form data).

 

It's not a problem really, just a little bit annoying.

 

cheers,

Gert

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200k actually. I'm going to do some additional testing.

Howdy, Jeremy. It looks like this problem has been resolved. I can once again upload images that are larger than 600 pixels wide and smaller than 125KB without the site automatically downsizing them to 600 pixels.

 

Could you tell us what you found to be the trouble with this, if anything? Just curious about what would cause it.

 

Thanks for your time and efforts.

 

Cheers ...

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Howdy, Jeremy. It looks like this problem has been resolved.

 

Could you tell us what you found to be the trouble with this, if anything? Just curious about what would cause it.

Sorry I didn't respond after I applied a few changes.

 

What I believe happened is that the image loaded into the system was estimated larger than it is.

 

Additionally, the first time I tried to up the limit, I didn't apply the settings to the right file, so it was still using that 125kb upper limit. I applied the setting to 200k on the correct settings file and it seemed to fix the problem. For some images now the file sizes allowed are a bit larger.

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I'm addressing the map printing issues today. I set the mapping to be a bit too efficient. It currently deletes the images from the map server immediately after you see them, so printing (which uses old maps) them results in a broken image.

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Hi,

 

Just a quick question...

 

I hear (read) lots about the servers filling up, and things in gc.com working slowly, and the continual need for more and faster computers. In the light of those comments, why has the photo size been increased to 200k?

 

If you limited photos on gc.com to 100k, wouldn't many of the problems associated with space and speed go away? If people want to post larger images, why not ask them to do so on their own websites?

 

Just curious,

 

NFA

Edited by NFA
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Disk space is cheap, and images are pretty easily handled by the web server. It is the CPU heavy stuff like searching through 100k in active caches and over 3 million logs that cause the occasional computer problem.

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Disk space is cheap, and images are pretty easily handled by the web server. It is the CPU heavy stuff like searching through 100k in active caches and over 3 million logs that cause the occasional computer problem.

gotcha...thanks

 

nfa

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Not sure if this has anything to do with the migration but pocket queries seem to be a bit slow again. Yesterday, the one that usually shows up around 5am central time didn't arrive until 2 pm central. Nothing yet for today. Just thought I would pass that along.

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Jeremy,

 

Another problem has cropped up. :ph34r: Look at CE0225 and CE0226 in the benchmarks. I have uploaded some photos of the new bridge that replaced the old one that had the benchmarks on it. The benchmarks are gone. But something in the photo resizing has changed. The photos used to print on one page with room to spare. Now they are much larger than the page, so nearly 1/2 the photo is cropped out.

 

I admit I have been uploading large (+/-300K) photos (for some time now), and letting the server cut them down to size. It keeps them consistantly the same size that way.

 

Dunno.... Sorry. Thanks for the maps back. :o

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We have switched over to the new codebase, with exceptions (the old maps and travel bug maps).

 

The system is now set up to work in a server farm. However, we're still waiting for the bit of hardware that will allow us to do this. We're pricing BigIP and Radware right now. the next step will be to move the web site to a fresh install which will separate the image server from the web server. Currently they run on the same box.

 

Another task we have is to speed up the database itself. We'll be adding a read-only database that will allow us to replicate the data to another machine. The second machine will allow for faster query times, like for complicated Pocket Queries.

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