By thekid on

Hello,

I have a really bizarre problem with Drupal.
I found a thread about this, but nobody replied with a solution/suggestion.
So, I apologize if I'm not supposed to create a new thread, or I have to revive the old thread instead :)

Ok, now the problem...
I recently installed Drupal on a new server. I noticed that Drupal was very slow when I was installing it (using Firefox).
It took 18 seconds on average to load the full page.
I thought that was because of some configurations on the server until someday I used IE to access the site because Firefox was not available on the machine I was using.
I could say the site was wicked fast on IE.

Has anyone experienced this problem and known a good solution?
We are all out of ideas, so we are going to compare the MySQL configuration, Apache and PHP configurations on the new server with another server that has already had Drupal installed but without this problem.

Perhaps someone could post his/her MySQL, Apache and PHP configurations as well.

Thank you.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

dultimaterunner’s picture

dultimaterunner commented

I'm running OS X, so I can't test in IE, but it does seem to me that drupal is quite slow in Firefox.

thekid’s picture

thekid commented

Thanks for the prompt reply.

We actually did some browser surveys:
PC/IE (cable) -> fast
PC/Firefox (cable/wireless) -> very slow

Mac OS X/Firefox (cable) -> as slow as PC/Firefox
Mac OS X/Safari (wireless)-> slow on some, fast on some

Btw, our server is XServe Apache/1.3.33 (Darwin) mod_ssl/2.8.24 OpenSSL/0.9.7l PHP/4.4.4 and MySQL 4.1.22.

You think it'll be a faster if we have MySQL 5?
Does it have something to do with Drupal caching?
Do you think we can make it faster if reduce the size of the CSS files? Like combining CSS files, etc.
Just to be honest, Drupal has too many built-in CSS files inside its modules :p

dman’s picture

dman commented

Well, it's not your Servers fault there's a difference between the two, so stop looking there.
It'll be your theme + modules + plugins

It's most likely a WYSIWYG issue. Each one of those JS libraries is firing up a mini-application, sometimes several times per page.
I find FF unbearable when running FCK editor and firebug together.

First test, disable javascript in firefox and see if everything speeds up a lot.
If so, get nasty on your included ajax add-ons.

FF extensions can also be pretty heavy sometimes ... depending.

.dan.
How to troubleshoot Drupal | http://www.coders.co.nz/

.dan. is the New Zealand Drupal Developer working on Government Web Standards

thekid’s picture

thekid commented

I have disabled JavaScript, but it still doesn't fix the problem.

I'm not sure if this forum is running on Drupal, but it's also slow when posting a new comment =p

esllou’s picture

esllou commented

just another consideration: don't presume it's Drupal

I had a horrible problem with FF and Drupal last month and it was because of Bit Defender, nothing at all to do with Drupal. You need to check on FF on different computers before you come to any conclusions.

thekid’s picture

thekid commented

I have tried that at home, but it was slow.
Our client who is using Firefox also notices that.

I will definitely check it again later with my firewall and antivirus program turned off.

What I don't understand is why my other installed Drupal seems to be reasonably fast on another server when accessed with Firefox but not on this new server.
Both have no additional modules nor modified settings (clean install).

Edit: what I wanted to say was:
I have Drupal installed on two different servers.
One is slow when accessed with Firefox, the other one has no problem with speed although they are accessed from the same machine.
Both are fast in Internet Explorer.

Anonymous’s picture

Anonymous (not verified) commented

Maybe the Devel module can help you define your problem.

thekid’s picture

thekid commented

Thank you for letting me know that there's such an useful module for development.

So, I checked the module and after comparing the page execution times, I found out that the execution times are about the same between Firefox and IE.
What does it mean? Is the problem not in Drupal nor server, but on the client side (the browser)?
But, I have a page load timer extension in my Firefox and the load time shown is not consistent with the page execution times (the extension shows longer time).
For example, the page execution time that the Devel module shows is 256.24 ms, but the page load timer shows 13.625 seconds.

Forgive me for not understanding what the Devel module can do, but could you tell me more about how to use it?

rrmstrng’s picture

rrmstrng commented

Firefox - Tools>Clear Private Data...
What does that do for you?

thekid’s picture

thekid commented

It does not do anything for me :(

thekid’s picture

thekid commented

Phew... this has been like a roller coaster for me, but finally I found the problem.

It was because of the dodgy XServe port.
Apparently, the page load was slower because it took time to redirect to port 16080.
I don't know how to explain this properly, but if I add :16080 after the domain name, the site becomes wicked fast in Firefox.
So it has to be http://example.com:16080 instead of just http://example.com
We will forward the port directly to the domain.

Thanks for the helps and supports.
I have to admit this is a great community where people do know their stuff :)

socialnicheguru’s picture

socialnicheguru commented

I will have to try this solution.

Chris

http://SocialNicheGuru.com
Delivering inSITE(TM), we empower you to deliver the right product and the right message to the right NICHE at the right time across all product, marketing, and sales channels.

catch’s picture

catch
he/him
Primary language English
commented

just o confirm were you logged in on both or logged out on both? That makes a massive difference and you didn't mention which it was.

chlobe’s picture

chlobe commented

for reference

rapidsynergy’s picture

rapidsynergy commented

I recently encountered a similar problem and discovered it was indeed a Firefox issue.

Type "about:config" in your Firefox browser and check the following settings:

browser.cache.disk.enable
browser.cache.memory.enable

These settings should both be set to true. For some inexplicable reason mine were not and were causing repeated extraneous GETs to the Drupal server.

For more info, check out: http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/edit#aboutconfig

Hopefully that helps somebody else because I had to do a bit of sleuthing to figure it out.

Cheers,
Eric

jorisx’s picture

jorisx commented

I know that this is about slowness on firefox.
But maybe also of interrest is that my drupal install seams to be slow when not loggedin (guest users)...
Actually only when logged in as admin the site seems a bit faster ...

Http://www.reloadmedia.com

AL13N’s picture

AL13N commented

almost all our drupal sites are slow on firefox and fast on konqueror.

It looks like firefox waits for a long time and then displays the page, while konqueror show the page quite fast.

this is for an anonymous user, who has never been to these sites before. CSS caching is enabled etc... there is no proxy running at our place.

I donno what it is, it looks like the page cache works, both in firefox and in konqueror, but for some reason, you get a blank page for at least 15 seconds before it loads.

I've been thinking:
- javascript thing? there seem to be no javascript bug on it, and even then, there's not even that much javascript anyway.
- maybe this is an apache server config problem, but it's not as simple as a .gz handler, or something, cause it doesn't explain the 15 sec delay in fetching.

It could be a firefox problem, but that doesn't matter, other sites load fast in firefox. besides our sites have to work fine on standard firefoxes.

I'm a bit at a loss here... any ideas?

Luca O’s picture

Luca O commented

Using FF3 - with Adblock! - usually i get better performance than IE6 and IE7. Only Opera seems to be faster.
Subscribing, i'm curious.

cattalk’s picture

cattalk commented

When I work on drupalsites with Fire Fox 3.x on Mac it happens everytime that after about 30 mins that the browser hangs for at first about a second from time to time. But then it gets worse. After about an hour I get spinning beachballs for several seconds every minute or so. The beachball iterrupts everything, scrolling, clicking, typing no matter what.
I tried all sorts of things but the only solution is to close FF and restart an log in again.
I have this problem on different sites and on different machines. One site doesnt use WYSIWYG, so FCK Editor or Tiny isnt the problem as I first suspected.
I now use Safari or Opera when I have to do admin stuff. Its lightspeed compared to FF. Its sad for Firebug but like this FF and Drupal are hell to use.

greetings
cat

der_sensemann’s picture

der_sensemann commented

My drupal (www.rr371.de) is also extremly slow (30+ Seconds) on Firefox (3.6), but fast on IE 8 (which i didn't wanna use...).

When i call a node first in FF its slow but not extremly, if i call it for the second time it takes much longer. And if i cancel loading the node and try it again instantly it gets much faster. Any ideas for this?

Jo

kaakuu’s picture

kaakuu commented

subscribed

cruzeazy’s picture

cruzeazy commented

I disabled firebug on Firefox and noticed that I regained normal load times.
So I then disabled the Drupal for Firebug module.
Then I re-enabled firebug on Firefox, and so far all is well.
Will keep you posted if I experience any more problems.

cattalk’s picture

cattalk commented

I found that disabling the YSlow FF-extension made the beachball go away.
Now its still a bit slow, especially when editing a node with fck editor enabled but the dreaded beachball breaks dont come up anymore.

regards
cat

flyboynomad’s picture

flyboynomad commented

After doing a whole lot of research I have found. Firefox with little or No ad dons works fine with drupal.

However in Firefox there is a secret menu

about:config - type this in your browser URL(Firefox)

click on the next button or whatever you see.

look for
Browser.cache.disk.capacity - default is around 5 MB , change it to more than 50 mb
browser.cache.disk.enable - should be true

Restart FF

Cheers :D

tehkemo’s picture

tehkemo commented

for me just turning off the firebug solved the long loading times - hoever I need to use it when working on website I have to view output in chrome and other stuff ( working with output doing in firefox) - to minimize refreshes I use CSS Reloader (firefox addon) to load just CSS not the whole page.

Hope this helps,

Tom