hi, I got a very strange problem this morning.

Memory use dropped dramatically, normally it would be like:

60-70% memory usage, 256+ proccesses running in apache

now:
14% memory usage, around 50 processes running, with same traffic!

the site is considerablly slower. I didn't modify anything, it just changed overnight, does anyone know what caused this?

i really appreciated!
Kris

Can you paste the output from free? Generally 95% of your memory will be used since the kernel does file caching. I have yet to ever see the kernel stop doing that on its own.

Current Memory Usage
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 506076 296796 209280 0 20980 191664
-/+ buffers/cache: 84152 421924
Swap: 1044216 0 1044216
Total: 1550292 296796 1253496


the problem is it's showing 20 proccesses , 0 idle
that's not right, it use to be like
90 proccess, 165 idle, something like this.

apache maxclients is 256
it's just not right now.

Kris,

as long as your site still running. Why worry? :)

hi, james
the problem is it's running considerably slower, cause memory is not utilized...
:)

Have you tried restarting apache?

yeah, reboot the server 3 times, no change

Prehaps you need a RAM stick replaced?