load is rocketing - what to do?

[Tenaka]

hello,

I just noticed my server load going way over 1
what can I do?
the # of processes is normal, apache processes are just fine, traffic is a little bit more than usual and my processor usage is between 0.4 and 0.6

where to look and what to do?

need some advice

###edit###
here is the link, have a look: http://www.web-designerz.de/serverstats/

[falko]

If you have a lot of PHP scripts I'd recommend that you install eAccelerator ( http://eaccelerator.net/ ) or APC ( http://pecl.php.net/package/APC ).

I'm using eAccelerator myself, and it has lowered my system load a lot!

[till]

Maybe you get a lot of spam emails that where processed by spamassassin. If i look at your server stats that might have caused the high load.

[themachine]

Originally Posted by Tenaka

hello,

I just noticed my server load going way over 1
what can I do?
the # of processes is normal, apache processes are just fine, traffic is a little bit more than usual and my processor usage is between 0.4 and 0.6

where to look and what to do?

need some advice

###edit###
here is the link, have a look: http://www.web-designerz.de/serverstats/

You'd probably get some information from 'top' to see what might be grabbing the resources. "netstat -ant" might give you an idea if certain services are taking alot of hits.

[Tenaka]

thx for the help,

Subject: HTTP BLACKLIST 82.77.113.37

mod_dosevasive HTTP Blacklisted 82.77.113.37

I just got this warning, I have set up mod_dosevasive and mod_security on the server and both modules are frequently catching bad guys, but this happened long after the load went down again.

I certainly hada look at top - nothing unusual to be found there, it was not an email problem I ruled that out too, it might be what falko suggested - a lot of php scripts,...

I told you in former postst (talking about squid and or mod_cache) that I am hosting a site with a huge image gallery, now the image gallery relies solely on php and mysql, they have a forum too, so I am going to test the links falko gave...

thx for the help so far.

[Tenaka]

after first test eaccelerator works like a charm ;-)
lets see how it performs when all those greedy visitors with their greedy browsers come back tomorrow ;-)

[Tenaka]

falko can you explain this setting:

* eaccelerator.shm_only = "0"

Enables or disables caching of compiled scripts on disk. It has no effect on session data and content caching. Default value is "0" which means - use disk and shared memory for caching.

I have set eaccelerator up so it uses disk and memory cache. mem size is set to max 32 MB - after 1 day still 9MB free in mem but disk cache is already 26MB - what is cached where??? shal I set it to mem only? I cannot aford much more than 32MB of ram...
why is it using disk cache when there is more free memory? the stats shows it did not unload any file from cache beacuse there was enough space...

any more hints?

[falko]

I'm using the default values from the README file, they work for me. I didn't play around with the settings...

[till]

Maybe eaccelerator stores the files on disk and in mem cahche, to keep the compiled scripts when apache is restarted. I recommend to let the memory setting at the default, if you get good acceleration of your php scripts.

[Tenaka]

well, after almost 24h I determined I can spare 32MB cache and theres a 8MB spare not used atm. I tested visiting all sites I am hosting, virtually trying to get a picture of the server serving each site on this day and its running beautiful.

@falko
I recomment putting the eaccelerator.php somewhere accessible on the web (password protected) and have a look at how your cache is used, you might gain some improvement when changing the default setting of 16MB cache in ram (versio9n 0.94rc1) to 32 MB in my case...

Now if I only would succeed in getting mod_cache to work with my apache I would also cache the static components (images)...