Background Processes Question

[InsanityScreams]

It seems that after upgrading to IPS4 there is a lot of broken content before the background processes have completed -- e.g. posts that used bbcode not displaying properly due to formatting not having been updated.

The problem is that the background tasks take days to complete at best. "IPS\core\Messenger\Message" has to go through 1.9 billion entries. Although I realise background processes are designed to do just that -- run in the background --  the formatting errors will be a significant annoyance to our forum's members if they are to last for at least several days before they are rectified in addition to the continuous server load during that period.

Taking down the forum to run the process manually would not only be an inconvenience to members but also very costly in terms of lost revenue that maintains the site. We are a support forum for mental health issues and if formatting errors persist or if the forum is offline for a long period then it can cause a significant amount of distress.

Is there any way to speed up these processes? Can they at least be run "backwards" so that the most recent records are updated first (the forum dates back to 2005, so amending records from 10 years ago is pretty much a redundant exercise).

It's very difficult to see how to perform a full upgrade under these conditions. Any advice would be very much appreciated

 

[InsanityScreams]

I apologise if I sound like an idiot (not hard to do :p) but I'm wondering if somebody can shed some light on the following:

At the moment the background processes, being run manually, are switching between these two in the browser tab:

Processing RebuildPosts - IPS\forums\Topic\Post - 179041 / 1205223
Processing RebuildPosts - IPS\core\Messenger\Message - 240305 / 1883026978

Now the first I can understand -- the database also shows about 1.2 miliion records for the posts table, which is by far the largest.

To what is the second process referring? Where on earth are 1.8 billion entries that need processing?