easy populate stalls, too many products?

[bowes]

Hi! I'm having problems downloading my EasyPopulate Attributes file. There are too many attributes and products in my database and it keeps stalling on a blank page before it can finish. Using 1.3.9a and EP 1.2.5.7.csv.

I have about 3300 products loaded and maybe a hundred attributes, but I'm the furthest thing from a programmer and don't understand the lingo, so bear with me.

I'm told my server has RAM memory limits that have prevented EP from finishing this file, but I hired a programmer to fix it, and he did. Something about changing the way it wrote the file so it wouldn't excede the server memory.

But after that, I added another thousand products and it again stalls and the person that fixed won't respond.

Suggestions? A known fix? Too me this is a core value of the zencart system and if it doesn't work there's no way I can keep on top of the products in the store.

I'd be happy to pay the zencart management to work out a fix for release also.

[kuroi]

Are you using a dedicated server, a VPS or a shared server account?

How much RAM is allowed for each process? (You can find out by going into your admin and clicking on the version link.)

What symptom are you seeing telling you that this is a memory limit problem?

[bowes]

Hi! It's a shared server, version page shows a PHP Memory Limit of 64M.

The symptom was a stalled attributes file download when my product database grew, so I hired a programmer to fix, and he said he changed the query to write the file in a different way that wouldn't exceed the memory limit. It worked until I added another thousand products. The EP page shows its downloading for about 5 minutes then it quits on a blank page and no error given.

The other EP files load fine, the last working attributes file was 33,589 KB and it's probably 40,000 KB now after adding more items.

[kuroi]

If your PHP processes are limited to 64MB and just loading your file takes 40MB of that, then it's entirely possible that it's no longer possible to code around it.

A quicker, cheaper and more feasible option would be to move to a hosting account, or VPS that offers a memory profile more suited to your usage.

[bowes]

true, its just too costly right now for that.

is there a way to export the file into seperate blocks of say 500 rows each? or to slow it down/pause it as it exports to stay within memory limits?

[kuroi]

You're kidding, right? Hosting is way cheaper than professional development.

Had one of my clients upgrade their VPS this week from 512MB to 1GB RAM. The incremental monthly cost approximates to about 5 minutes of development time at my standard rate.

[lankeeyankee]

You can increase the time limit for each process by uploading a customized php.ini file to your cart's root directory. You can use less RAM but it takes longer and the script is reaching the per-process time limit.

Have you tried creating the file in the temp directory and then download it from there?

[bowes]

my host wants $150/month for dedicated hosting.

did try sending it to the temp dir but no luck, and i'm not sure what the programmer did for php tweaks.

[kuroi]

Over here (in the UK) we can get a VPS with a gig of RAM for $30 a month or less. I'd expect it to be cheaper still for you.

If you gave your PHP processes access to half of that, then you'd be giving them a huge amount of headroom compared to the 64Mb you have currently.

[kuroi]

Your developer may have done something to chunk the reading of the file so that it wasn't all in memory at the same time. But you have so little space to play with that this would also have been at risk of overflowing the resources (memory or time) available.