I have a site with a large number of entries ... well over 2000. Very few of the entries have comments and those with comments have only a few. Lately when rebuilding the site, my browser (any browser; I've tried several different browsers -- the browser isn't the problem) returns a "lost network connection error". Generally this happens when rebuilding the category pages. The mt.cgi script seems to go on a rampage, chewing up server resources and never finishing the rebuild process.

I don't think it's a problem with bad template tags, since the rebuild worked fine with fewer entries. It's a stock mt 3.2 install, not some host-modified mish-mash, a la Yahoo.

In searching for a solution, I've read rumblings that mt doesn't scale very well. Is there an upper limit to the number of entries, relative or absolute? Is there a way to get more detailed information during the rebuild process? A debug logging option perhaps?

Surely I'm not the first person to encounter such a scenario, yet I'm finding detailed information elusive at best.

Any thoughts?

Let's see if I can add some more information ...

System details ... MT 3.2, based on a fresh up-to-date install (no upgrade), EntriesPerRebuild is set to 1, 2 plugins installed; MTPaginate (incluedes BigPAPI) and exclude_cats.pl.

Content details ... 2558 entries, 38 categories (one has 2149 entries in it, otherwise they have between 20 and 200 entries), 9 comments. Trackbacks are disabled.

I can rebuild indexes, individual and weekyl archives, but not categories. Rebuild URL is:

hxxp://mysite/cgi-bin/mt.cgi?__mode=rebuild
&blog_id=1
&type=Category
&next=0
&offset=
&limit=
&total_entries=2558
&is_bm=
&entry_id=
&is_new=
&old_status=
&old_previous=
&old_next=

Rebuilding categories fails regardless of the content of the categories template ... which would indicate to me that it's choking before

The specific error is "lost network connection" ... I get this same basic error regardless of which browser I use. Normally during the rebuild process, CPU usage is fairly normal. It doesn't spike much and rarely does it spike very high. When rebuilding categories (or attempting to enter power-editing mode, incidentally) the CPU usage goes nuts -- two mt.cgi processes at 99.x%

I'm wondering just how many category pages mt.cgi is attempting to build at once.

Everything except building categories and power-editing mode works fine. The problem was not present when there were fewer categories/articles, but I can't say for certain at what point things went pear-shaped.

UPDATE: I made a category, 'TEST CAT', with a single article, 'TEST ART' in it ... when building the individual article, the problem occurs. Two mt.cgi process run rampant with the CPU. Oddly, the article and the category are built. I'm assuming that when building the categories, it will be building only the 'TEST CAT' category.

Any ideas?

I've solved my problem ... kinda, sorta ...

Rebuilding is working normally again. I had some entry-context-specific tags on a category-context page. This freaks mt.cgi right out. Perhaps some better error handling on this would be helpful in future releases. Moral ... if you can't rebuild your pages, check the context of the tags.

Power-editing mode still does not work, however. For whatever reason, when loading the power-editing page it times out and a "lost network connection" error is returned. CPU usage on a single mt.cgi process is 99.x% ... similar to the problem with rebuilding categories.

I'll keep plugging away, and if I find a solution to the power-editing problem I'll post again.

I keep getting the same error if I rebuild whole site, OR publish a new entry with a category that contains lots of entries.

i'm getting that safari message on a blog with on 81 entries with comments and trackbacks turned off. it tries to rebuild the first 40 and fails.