Insane server load with plugin activated

[Josh]

Something about a recent update has caused our server to hang whenever the events calendar plugin is loaded. The DB is flooded with hundreds of hung connections and we get stack traces that look like the following:

…qli_query called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-includes/
wp-db.php (1877)
…_do_query called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-includes/
wp-db.php (1765)
…db::query called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-includes/
wp-db.php (2388)
…log/wp-content/plugins/__the-events-calendar/common/src/Tribe/Meta/
Chunker.php (103)
…log/wp-content/plugins/__the-events-calendar/common/src/Tribe/Meta/
Chunker.php (82)
…events-calendar/common/vendor/lucatume/di52/src/tad/DI52/Bindings/
Resolver.php (411)
…s/__the-events-calendar/common/vendor/lucatume/di52/src/tad/DI52/
Container.php (119)
…t/blog/wp-content/plugins/__the-events-calendar/common/src/Tribe/
Container.php (176)
…etpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-content/plugins/__the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/
Main.php (656)
…etpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-content/plugins/__the-events-calendar/src/Tribe/
Main.php (335)
…d called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-includes/
class-wp-hook.php (298)
…s called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-includes/
class-wp-hook.php (323)
…o_action called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-includes/
plugin.php (453)
in do_action called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-settings.php (326)
in require_once called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-config.php (75)
in require_once called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/blog/wp-load.php (37)
…_once called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/forum/includes/
vbpvw_hooks.php (53)
in include called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/forum/includes/init.php(306) : eval()’d code (178)
in eval called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/forum/includes/init.php (306)
in require_once called at /mnt/ebs-volume/inetpub/wwwroot/forum/global.php (20)

With queries looking like:
SELECT post_id, meta_key FROM wp_postmeta
WHERE meta_key LIKE ?
AND meta_key NOT LIKE

In the attached graph the purple is the events calendar plugin.

[Cliff]

Hi, Josh.

Do you have an old version of PHP? WordPress recommends PHP 7: https://wordpress.org/about/requirements/

Although the latest versions of our plugins should work down to PHP 5.2, we highly recommend using at least PHP 5.5, 5.6, or 7.

Please share your System Information in a Private Reply. That will give me a lot of extra information to help troubleshoot this.

[Josh]

PHP 7.0 for users, 7.1 for admins.

[Cliff]

Josh, I’m not clear how you have 2 versions of PHP. Please elaborate.

[Josh]

It shouldn’t make much of a difference, but the user agent or IP address is used to specify either 7.0 or 7.1. 7.0 is for the normal web users and 7.1 is used for a few admins because it allows us to use xdebug and other trace tools in conjunction with apcu. 7.0 apc/xdebug is apparently an issue at present.

[Cliff]

Gotcha. Thanks for clarifying. I now understand you’re on the “advanced” level of our users 🙂

Well, since this isn’t currently a known issue, I’d suggest following our typically-recommended troubleshooting steps:

There might be some new updates available. Could you please make sure all your Modern Tribe plugins (and WordPress core) are at their latest versions?

• Downloads / Version Numbers
• License Keys
• TEC Automatic Updates
• or TEC Manual Updates
• WordPress core updates

Once you verify you’re on the latest versions, please test to see if the issue is still happening for you.

If it is, please follow our Testing for Conflicts Guide (basically switch to Twenty Seventeen theme and deactivate all plugins and custom code other than Modern Tribe plugins) and see if that helps narrow down the cause of this.

Of course, we always recommend restorable database and file backups before modifying anything on your site.

If it doesn’t, please enable WP_DEBUG and WP_DEBUG_LOG (which will create a file on your server at /wp-content/debug.log if there are any WP_DEBUG messages) and share any debug messages you see while trying to replicate this issue and doing other things on your site relevant to this ticket (such as visiting your site’s home page, events page, single-event pages, and anything else you can think to do).

Then, please share your System Information (while in Testing for Conflicts Mode) in a Private Reply. That will give me a lot of extra information to help troubleshoot this.

You might also see if you can spot any console errors at your site. (If needed, you may reference our KB article Using Google Chrome Developer Tools.)

Let us know what you find out.

Thanks.

[Josh]

We upgraded and the server load seems to have improved somehow.

Any other complaints about the plugin performance in recent builds?

[Cliff]

Well that’s good to hear!

There are a variety of possible performance improvements we’re aware of, but nothing really of the magnitude of throwing such errors or breaking sites.

However, I did hear of another user having a different plugin that loaded https://github.com/lucatume/DI52 (one of the things mentioned in your errors) and getting everything up to their latest versions solved it for them.

Please let me know if you have any follow-up questions on this topic.

[Support Droid]

Hey there! This thread has been pretty quiet for the last three weeks, so we’re going to go ahead and close it to avoid confusion with other topics. If you’re still looking for help with this, please do open a new thread, reference this one and we’d be more than happy to continue the conversation over there.

Thanks so much!
The Events Calendar Support Team

[Author]

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