[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #37021: heartbeat goes bonkers and spams host with ajax requests every few seconds

[WordPress Trac]

#37021: heartbeat goes bonkers and spams host with ajax requests every few seconds
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 Reporter:  ncslhostmaster  |      Owner:
     Type:  defect (bug)    |     Status:  new
 Priority:  normal          |  Milestone:  Awaiting Review
Component:  General         |    Version:  4.5.2
 Severity:  normal          |   Keywords:
  Focuses:                  |
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 I have a client who uses 3rd party hosting for their Wordpress site. The
 site has lots of plugins, among them heartbeat control and idle user
 logout. We have noticed the behavior where, under some condition, the
 browser starts spamming the host with ajax requests (/wp-admin/admin-
 ajax.php?action=get_current_status) until the server overloads, runs out
 of memory and renders all sites and services on the host unusable. I have
 been reading about this problem on the wordpress blogs and thus have
 installed heartbeat and idle user logout to address the issue. However,
 the issue still appears, though less often. Finally today we saw it
 happening before the overload had taken place, and were able to contact
 the user, find out what they were doing, and narrow down the possible
 causes. I am hoping that this will be helpful information for the
 developers. Here is some specific information that I have to pass on:
 1 - The laptop that appeared to be the cause of the problem was logged
 into the admin interface using the chrome browser. It had many tabs open,
 some on the same page. The user had been updating pages, switching between
 tabs, and reviewing the changes. They have both an english and a french
 area to the site, and were translating from english to french, using copy
 and past and a translation package.
 2 - The heartbeat settings should have limited the ajax connection rate to
 every 60 seconds, but clearly was not doing so.
 3 - Idle User Logout should have knocked off the laptop after 3600
 seconds, however, the laptop had been sitting there logged in for 17
 hours, idle and it never logged out.
 Other notes:
 The user also had a desktop computer in another room, and had been doing
 similar things on it, but using the firefox browser. When the problem was
 occuring I had the user close down tabs on the desktop, but it did not
 change the incoming connection rate. When the user went to the laptop and
 closed the tabs on the laptop, and logged it out, the spamming stopped. I
 suspect it is a javascript related issue, maybe related to chrome, maybe
 also related to multiple tabs, that causes the behavior to go wrong.
 I would be willing to provide more detailed information if it is needed.
 Regards,
 Steve

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/37021>
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