Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Hosting Security and Technology : Would Apache trouble affect ping times?

[Lancia]

Would overloaded Apache service slow down the ping times to a server?

[EMT-Chris]

Its not going to be "apache" that causes high ping times. It would be either high load on the system, or saturated network. Apache its self wont reply to pings.

[Lancia]

OK, that's what I thought. But what kind of load are you talking about? A high amount of bandwidth?

[EMT-Chris]

Load as in processor utilization. So if apache was hogging the processor, then yes, it could delay pings.

Chris

[Lancia]

Oh, well yes it is hogging the processor very badly. Sometimes up to 99.9% of CPU resources. How can I determine if it's a configuration problem/bug with Apache that can be fixed, or if I need to upgrade my server's hardware?

[EMT-Chris]

What operating systen are you running?

What are your system specs?

How my clients are on the server?


Chris

[Lancia]

RedHat Linux 8.0
WHM 9.4.0 cPanel 9.4.0-R21

Dual Intel Xeon 2.4 Ghz
1 GB DDR RAM
73 GB SCSI drive

The server is running one PHP/MySQL intensive site, with a large vBulletin forum.

[EMT-Chris]

Thats a fairly hefty server...

How much traffic does it push on a monthly basis?

Do you have your kernel configured for multiple processors? I've seen that overlooked before.

Can you past the output of top (type 'top' at ssh), that way we can see whats all running and see what state its in.

Chris

[Lancia]

The server pushes about 300-500 GB per month.

I don't know about the kernel, or how to check it...it's a server from a NOCSTER/BurstNET reseller. The server has ran great, with about the same amount of traffic, in the past.

  2:27am  up 2 days,  9:04,  1 user,  load average: 1.68, 1.94, 2.21
216 processes: 215 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU0 states:  5.0% user,  1.1% system,  5.2% nice, 93.0% idle
CPU1 states:  7.0% user,  0.2% system,  7.3% nice, 91.4% idle
CPU2 states: 13.2% user,  3.4% system, 13.2% nice, 82.1% idle
CPU3 states:  6.0% user,  0.4% system,  6.3% nice, 92.2% idle
Mem:  1030768K av, 1017472K used,   13296K free,       0K shrd,   94712K buff
Swap: 1052216K av,  119304K used,  932912K free                  518120K cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
24965 root      10   4  2676 1152  1116 S N  33.6  0.1  59:01 httpd
 2772 root      14   0  1240 1240   884 R     4.0  0.1   0:01 top
14602 mysql     13   6 79352  62M 12404 S N   1.9  6.1  39:02 mysqld
    1 root       8   0   528  484   464 S     0.0  0.0   0:05 init
    2 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 keventd
    3 root      19  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU0
    4 root      19  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU1
    5 root      19  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU2
    6 root      19  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU3
    7 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   1:33 kswapd
    8 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 bdflush
    9 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:46 kupdated
   10 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsbufd
   11 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfslogd/0
   12 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfslogd/1
   13 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfslogd/2
   14 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfslogd/3
   15 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsdatad/0
   16 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsdatad/1
   17 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsdatad/2
   18 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsdatad/3

[snickn]

Another gig of RAM definitely wouldn't hurt. You're swapping a bit.

[EMT-Chris]

You are getting into swap space fairly hevily. Reboot your server to recover from this. Then have anouther 512 or 1024 megs of RAM added to the server.

Also, Apache is running as root, which is a bad idea. You may want to consult a security specialist as well.

Chris

[Lancia]

OK, thanks for the help, guys. If it was an Apache issue I was going to hire a professional admin to check on it for me, but if it can't be helped without more hardware then I guess that's just what I'll have to do.

[Lancia]

Just an update...I restarted my server, as you suggested, Chris, and my server immediately returned with a high load. There's not even swapping...or does it matter? Would I still need more RAM just to keep the load down?

  2:48am  up 5 min,  1 user,  load average: 1.97, 1.34, 0.58
140 processes: 139 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU0 states:  2.1% user,  8.1% system,  0.0% nice, 89.1% idle
CPU1 states:  3.2% user,  0.3% system,  0.0% nice, 95.4% idle
CPU2 states:  5.4% user,  0.5% system,  0.0% nice, 93.0% idle
CPU3 states:  1.0% user,  0.4% system,  0.0% nice, 98.0% idle
Mem:  1030768K av,  368152K used,  662616K free,       0K shrd,   36952K buff
Swap: 1052216K av,       0K used, 1052216K free                  138584K cached

  PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM   TIME COMMAND
 1336 root       9   0  4928 4928  4760 S    14.1  0.4   0:14 httpd
 1116 mysql      9   0  9820 9820  1416 S     1.7  0.9   0:02 mysqld
 1619 root      11   0  1124 1124   884 R     0.3  0.1   0:00 top
  179 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.1  0.0   0:00 kjournald
  182 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.1  0.0   0:01 kjournald
  910 root       9   0  1384 1384  1248 S     0.1  0.1   0:00 sshd
    1 root       8   0   544  544   480 S     0.0  0.0   0:03 init
    2 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 keventd
    3 root      19  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:01 ksoftirqd_CPU0
    4 root      18  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU1
    5 root      19  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU2
    6 root      18  19     0    0     0 SWN   0.0  0.0   0:00 ksoftirqd_CPU3
    7 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 kswapd
    8 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 bdflush
    9 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:01 kupdated
   10 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsbufd
   11 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfslogd/0
   12 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfslogd/1
   13 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfslogd/2
   14 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfslogd/3
   15 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsdatad/0
   16 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsdatad/1
   17 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsdatad/2
   18 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 xfsdatad/3
   20 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 ahc_dv_0
   21 root       9   0     0    0     0 SW    0.0  0.0   0:00 scsi_eh_0
   23 root      -1 -20     0    0     0 SW<   0.0  0.0   0:00 mdrecoveryd

[EMT-Chris]

Well, your processors look idle, so I'm guessing the load may be caused by the disk drives because you're certanly not using up your processors.

Try something like:

/sbin/hdparm -Tt /dev/hda

That will perform a performance test on your disk drives. Might be able to eliminate or pinpoint a disk drive issue.

Are you're databases well kept up and optimized?

Chris

[Lancia]

OK, I tried running that command but it returned this...

root@server [/]# /sbin/hdparm -Tt /dev/hda
/dev/hda: No such device or address

Yes, the databases and MySQL were just optimized by a vBulletin technician.