Unclogged

Posted on April 14, 2006 by Gene

For quite a while now — at least a year — my blog has been somewhat constipated. Every time I make an entry, it ruminates and lazes about and finally times out, leaving me frustrated and unsure whether my entry is actually floating around in the database or not.
Last week, I finally discovered what I thought was the problem: cache files. I tried opening a folder on the server with cache files, and waited about 10 minutes for it to open, it was so filled with files that the system bogged down. And it turns out that the blogging software automatically deletes cache files when a new entry is posted, so the upshot is that every time I tried to post, it took 10 minutes to go through the cache folder and delete files — making the system time out.
So this morning, my friend Jann poked around the server and wrote a script that will delete the cache files regularly, preventing them from piling up and slowing everything down. And incredibly, making my first post of the day was no longer an exercise in patience and frustration. I clicked “submit” and dammit, it did.
Thanks, Jann.
Now, do you think you could deal with the clog in my kitchen sink, too? I don’t think it has anything to do with cache files.