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Rank: Enthusiast
Joined: 3/13/2008
Posts: 16
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Hi
A client of mine is hosting two umbraco sites on virtual servers with a web host - they have no experience of umbraco, but are flexible and friendly. All seemed to be OK most of the time, but every few days we start getting
"Object reference not set to an instance of an object" errors when clicking on a node in the content tree. Top bit of stack trace (I'm typing by hand from a screenshot, hence not putting it all in!) is:
[NullReferenceException: Object Reference not set to an instance of an object.]
umbraco.controls.contentcontrol.addcontrolnew(property p, tabpage tp, string caption) +54
Shortly after this point, I normally find I can't remote desktop into the box, and have to get the hosts to restart it. They keep saying there's some sort of memory leak, and the only thing weird about the box is we have umbraco running on it. Their latest response was:
"I've investigated this myself and your VPS is displaying some out of memory issues. Could it be that Umbraco either has a memory leak or isn't compatible with visualisation? "
(I think he meant virtualisation, but if any of you know otherwise, do say - I'm no server guru).
I'm not sure what to do. I'm good with XSL, and knocking sites together in Umbraco is good - I really like it - but when presented with this sort of problem I'm at a bit of a loss. The client we build the sites for is getting jittery about umbraco, as you might expect, suggesting it's crap - but obviously not every site does this otherwise it just wouldn't be a popular CMS.
Any ideas what I might be able to do? Any recommended minimum specs for the virtual server, perhaps, that they might be under?
It's a bit annoying, because we'd love to keep doing umbraco sites, but trying to defend something you don't understand becomes untenable after a while :)
Thanks all!
Dan
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Rank: Fanatic
Joined: 7/22/2006
Posts: 255
Location: Randers, Denmark
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Unfortunately I've never seen this before, so I can't come up with a solution. But it is very interesting to me as I'm about (within a few months) to move our Umbraco-solutions from shared hosting to a virtual server. I have, however, had memory problems on our Debian Linux virtual server with the Java VM and the webmail server Zimbra. The host machine has got 16 GB of RAM and each virtual instance has been allocated 512MB of memory. Despite that Java is running inside the virtual instance it sees the total amount of host machine and not the limit at 512 MB. Therefore Zimbra exits with a strange error. Could it be something similar on the .NET-platform?
Best Regards Simon Simm.dk - My base on the web - proud Umbracian since 2.0 Beta
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Rank: Umbracoholic
Joined: 9/8/2006
Posts: 1,696
Location: KY, USA
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Hi, Dan, I understand your client's concern! I have to say, though, that a memory leak of this magnitude from two sites is extremely unlikely or, as you say, everyone would experience it. Please tell us a bit more about your setup. What are the specs for the VPS (memory, disk and sql space, os and sql version, umbraco version, etc.)? What else is running on the VPS? Also, tell us about your umbraco installation(s). How many nodes, how much traffic, what packages are installed, any custom .net controls or data types, etc.? I you're not running umbraco v3.0.5, I would suggest you upgrade. (be sure to back up your files and database at every step... just in case you want to go back) While we wait to hear back from you, here are some links that might provide useful background and debugging hints. http://forum.umbraco.org/yaf_postst4489_Umbraco-Install-Broken.aspxhttp://forum.umbraco.org/yaf_postst4859_Umbraco-exception-something-to-do-with-Multiple-Page-Picker-Via-Source-after-umbraco-v305-upgrade.aspxhttp://forum.umbraco.org/yaf_postst4136_304-dll-hotfix-available.aspx and http://www.codeplex.com/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ProjectName=umbraco&ReleaseId=8562 and http://forum.umbraco.org/yaf_postst1524_Umbraco-console-crash-on-Item-Click.aspxand http://www.codeplex.com/umbraco/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=9591As always, let us know what you find out. cheers, doug.
MVP 2007-2009 - Official Umbraco Trainer for North America - Percipient Studios
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Rank: Enthusiast
Joined: 3/13/2008
Posts: 16
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drobar wrote:
Please tell us a bit more about your setup. What are the specs for the VPS (memory, disk and sql space, os and sql version, umbraco version, etc.)? What else is running on the VPS?
Also, tell us about your umbraco installation(s). How many nodes, how much traffic, what packages are installed, any custom .net controls or data types, etc.?
I you're not running umbraco v3.0.5, I would suggest you upgrade. (be sure to back up your files and database at every step... just in case you want to go back)
Hi Guys Thanks for the replies... doug, the version is reporting as: umbraco v 3.0.3 (Assembly version: 1.0.2825.21247) Server is windows server 2003 standard edition service pack 2. Disc space is reporting as 4.76GB in total, 3.49GB free. Sites aren't even live yet - probably the most they've ever had is three people looking at them over the course of a day. I've 90% finished setting them up (nothing fancy, the only .net user controls are some simple contact forms - the rest is noddy XSLTs). So traffic is minimal to the point of nonexistent. I'll look into upgrading to 3.05 - any other thoughts you might have welcomed :) I'm not sure what else is running on the box but doubt it'll be anything that's causing this - the hosts are nice guys and trying to help - they seem genuinely perplexed. I told them I was asking around on here (I sympathise with them a bit - they know nothing about umbraco and I pop up saying aargh things are broken - naturally they suspect umbraco if their servers are working OK for others). His latest response was "No problem, if this fails I recommend we move them to a VM." Indulge me for a mo... I'm not sure what the distinction would be between what we've got now and a VM. I thought virtualisation was just the same thing as a virtual machine... I don't have to mess around with windows much thank God :) Cheers all, Dan
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Rank: Fanatic
Joined: 7/19/2006
Posts: 492
Location: Göteborg, Sweden
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They might have meant VMWARE, another supplier of virtualization software. They might use virtuozo today. It's way cheaper but doesn't simulate to server machine at the same level that VMWare does. I'm currently having three virtual servers (VMWARE) running for clients with between 3 and 7 Umbraco sites running on each (one even runs a smartermail mailserver as well). On the server with 7 sites each site contains between 3 and 5 thousand nodes, a bunch of custom .Net controls and macros. The databases are between 70 and 180 MB's and the server has 2GB Ram allocated. No memory problems has ever appeared, despite peaks of 2800 unique daily visitors per site... But we did have some db connection issues that came in a combination of a pre 3.05 version and a faulty activation of the auto-close feature in SQL-Server 2005. // ;) Kalle
" - Yeah I'd like to share your point of view, as long as it's my view too... ( http://www.d-a-d.dk/lyrics/pointofview)
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Rank: Umbracoholic
Joined: 7/20/2006
Posts: 1,074
Location: Charleston, West Virginia, United States
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Hi Dan, I have seen this problem before, and it tends to be with data types that were set up or are requiring data that does not exist. Look in the document type and see if you can view all the properties for the offending document type. If you have anything beyond text fields, text areas, rich text, etc, post back what they may be. It is also possible that one of the data types relies on other data that may no longer exist. For instance, a data type that is used to pick items from the content tree, but the node was deleted, may generate errors. If you need help, let me know, and I will log into your sites and help fix them if they are publicly available. If not, a screen share session may be in order.
• 2007/2008 MVP • 2008/2009 MVP • Certified • Licensing • Support • Development • Hosting •
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Rank: Fanatic
Joined: 7/21/2006
Posts: 253
Location: Salerno - Italy
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How mem use SQL service? If SQL is not heavy used, you can lower mem....
Red Consulting s.a.s - Umbraco from v1.0
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Rank: Devotee
Joined: 7/28/2006
Posts: 57
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dannyboy wallis wrote:Hi
A client of mine is hosting two umbraco sites on virtual servers with a web host - they have no experience of umbraco, but are flexible and friendly. All seemed to be OK most of the time, but every few days we start getting
...
Shortly after this point, I normally find I can't remote desktop into the box, and have to get the hosts to restart it. They keep saying there's some sort of memory leak, and the only thing weird about the box is we have umbraco running on it. Their latest response was:
"I've investigated this myself and your VPS is displaying some out of memory issues. Could it be that Umbraco either has a memory leak or isn't compatible with visualisation? "
(I think he meant virtualisation, but if any of you know otherwise, do say - I'm no server guru).
Can you run taskmgr and find out the memory usage of the various processes. I have one thought... XSLTs with inline code e.g. msxsl:script? The reason I ask is that inline xsl scripting has an inherent memory leak problem... It's common if you're extensively using scripts inside XSLTs to solve simple problems that XSL isn't good at.
Bawden Quinn Associates, UK
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Rank: Fanatic
Joined: 7/25/2006
Posts: 424
Location: Silkeborg, Denmark
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I briefly tried to run a couple of Umbraco sites on a virtual server, and quickly found it impossible as soon as I started hitting them with traffic. The reason was that they ran on a MS SQL 2005 Express database, which kept on hogging all the resources. My guess is that it's SQL Express rather than Umbraco that is using up all your memory. I think Umbraco 3.0.5 had a bunch of performance improvements on how it calls the database, so definately try upgrading ALL sites running on the server to 3.0.5. Or try the newest beta of 4.0, as it has a completely new datalayer. Hope this can help you just a little bit, and do let us know how you progress! /SoerenS
Brug for råd til hvordan du driver en god webshop? / Need advice on how to run an effective webshop?
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