[LON-CAPA-admin] slow response times

[James Mueller]

	Over the past term, our server has really started to feel sluggish.   
Now it could be that some piece of hardware is getting ready to die,  
but I wanted to check with everyone to see if there are other things I  
should look at.  (We just got department approval for funds to replace  
the server, so if it is hardware, that should go away soon.)

For example:

1) If I am editing my course, often the system will "hang" while  
displaying the screen.  It will start to display and then stop with  
the screen partially completed, and the message "Transferring data  
from..." at the bottom of the browser.  I can leave it like this for  
an hour or so and it never completes.  If I just click again on "Edit  
Course", it will reload the window, and may or may not complete.  I  
find that if I keep trying this, eventually (no more than 4 tries) it  
completes successfully.  However, as soon as I alter something in my  
course and loncapa decides to redisplay the updated page, I may ind  
myself repeating this procedure.

2) As I am writing this, I am trying to upload a scantron file from  
today's final exam (it's almost summer, when I can get back to work!)   
There are only 36 questions, but it is taking ~20 sec/student to  
process the file.  That works out to a half hour for my 100 student  
class, or over 1.5 hours for some of my colleagues with large  
classes.  This does not seem right, but I haven't had a class with  
loncapa for a couple of years, so perhaps I am not remembering how bad  
it used to be.

I have other examples, but that is enough for now.  Does anyone have  
any suggestions for what might go wrong (that won't get fixed by the  
new machine) that we should be looking at?

-Jim Mueller