Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : VPS Hosting : Mem loads wierdly high

[keith007]

Hi,

Here is a wierd problem

Two of my VPS's with a company are now showing very high memory loads, even after a reboot, both server are located on different nodes and they both shot up to high ram loads at the same time today(9amGMT)

[root@vps ~]# free -m -t
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2048 815 1232 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 815 1232
Swap: 0 0 0
Total: 2048 815 1232

The guarenteed ram is only 768MB and TOP doesnt list whats using the lot

Can some one point me in the write direction


Keith

[iTom]

What kind of program are you running on them?
I take it that you have not installed anything new? or done any changes recently?
Once had a service do an automated update and that program started using a lot of ram after that.

[keith007]

Hi,

Yes done nothing, just acted on an email stating service poor,
so checked top and saw the high memory, checked watchdog (plesk) and saw it step up high
then panic'd and check all my others and same problem and watchdog shows them both go high at same time

Heres the TOP results

top - 23:06:38 up 37 min, 1 user, load average: 0.01, 0.03, 0.06
Tasks: 76 total, 1 running, 75 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.5% us, 0.2% sy, 0.0% ni, 99.3% id, 0.0% wa, 0.0% hi, 0.0% si
Mem: 2097152k total, 763852k used, 1333300k free, 0k buffers
Swap: 0k total, 0k used, 0k free, 0k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
18254 popuser 16 0 34416 31m 2300 S 0.0 1.5 0:07.00 spamd
18255 popuser 15 0 32464 29m 2212 S 0.0 1.4 0:00.45 spamd
22083 apache 18 0 109m 29m 12m S 0.0 1.4 0:00.83 httpd
24313 apache 15 0 109m 29m 12m S 0.0 1.4 0:00.44 httpd
32601 apache 16 0 109m 29m 12m S 1.0 1.4 0:00.33 httpd
22230 apache 18 0 109m 28m 11m S 0.0 1.4 0:00.62 httpd
18244 root 15 0 30100 27m 2292 S 0.0 1.3 0:00.94 spamd
22060 apache 15 0 109m 25m 9124 S 0.7 1.2 0:00.40 httpd
1417 apache 15 0 109m 25m 9076 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.23 httpd
22211 apache 15 0 109m 24m 8660 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.78 httpd
1350 apache 15 0 109m 24m 7724 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.23 httpd
32411 apache 15 0 109m 23m 7756 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.18 httpd
19526 drweb 15 0 28660 23m 516 S 0.0 1.2 0:00.09 drwebd
22041 root 16 0 107m 22m 8404 S 0.3 1.1 0:00.34 httpd
32600 apache 15 0 108m 21m 5660 S 1.0 1.0 0:00.07 httpd
23927 mysql 15 0 200m 19m 4672 S 0.0 1.0 0:00.34 mysqld
9462 apache 15 0 107m 16m 1960 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9489 apache 15 0 107m 16m 1960 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9490 apache 15 0 107m 16m 1960 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9509 apache 15 0 107m 16m 1960 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9510 apache 15 0 107m 16m 1960 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9527 apache 15 0 107m 16m 1964 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9511 apache 18 0 107m 16m 1944 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9512 apache 18 0 107m 16m 1944 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9524 apache 16 0 107m 16m 1944 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9525 apache 15 0 107m 16m 1944 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9528 apache 15 0 107m 16m 1944 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9526 apache 17 0 107m 16m 1936 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9529 apache 18 0 107m 15m 1240 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9530 apache 21 0 107m 15m 1236 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
9533 apache 21 0 107m 15m 1236 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
22058 apache 15 0 107m 15m 868 S 0.0 0.8 0:00.00 httpd
19566 root 15 0 20364 8564 5988 S 0.0 0.4 0:00.06 sw-engine
18344 sso 23 0 23564 5832 4128 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.02 sw-engine-cgi
18359 sso 18 0 23568 5832 4128 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.01 sw-engine-cgi
18354 sso 23 0 23564 5828 4128 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.01 sw-engine-cgi
18364 sso 20 0 23564 5828 4128 S 0.0 0.3 0:00.01 sw-engine-cgi

[iTom]

How many emails are you sending out of the VPS on average? if its a shared server make sure there is no spam going out.

[UNIXy]

Checkout this tutorial on how to install SAR: http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=729846

Perhaps, it'll help you out in finding the root cause. In this case, I'd pay close attention to memory spikes and interface bandwidth.

Regards