By xjs on

I am using crucial paradigm's managed plan. My site (http://ispeakx.com, a new low traffic site) runs out of memory with apache 2 and php 5, and now has to run on apache 1.3 and php 4. And the memory usage is still high (when I type "top", it shows around 230 mb is used out of 256mb. (before it runs out of memory, it was running ok except for the same high memory usage. not sure what exactly has changed caused out of memory problem. see the whole story here.

I wonder if this is normal. Please share your experiences as I am concerned that I probably will need to add more memory soon.
Thanks very much.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 5.x

Comments

DrupalValueHosting’s picture

DrupalValueHosting commented

Hi xjs,

230 MB is a lot of memory to be used by the low traffic drupal website.

Here are some pointers:
1. Centos and many flavors of linux create a dynamic memory cache with all the available RAM in the system. This is to reduce paging on the disc. So possibly all of the 230 MB ram is not actually being used by anything in particular.

2. Did you optimize your mysql configuration (my.cnf file)? You can use the ones provided by the mysql installation docs if required for 256 MB config

3. The drupal install >> try turning the site to offline mode (or stop the httpd service) and then see the memory usage. Possibly it is not drupal that is hogging all that memory

Hope that was helpful

Regards,
Steve
http://www.DrupalValueHosting.com

crucialx’s picture

crucialx commented

Hi Xjs, I have updated your ticket regarding this.

However I will do a quick overview for you here. Linux automatically caches frequently accessed data to increase performance for you, if you use the 'free -m' command you will see that the majority of your RAM is being used for caching (which is nothing to worry about). If a Linux system is making use of 100% of its RAM thats a good thing, as it will be helping increase your performance as best possible!

Kind Regards,
Aaron Weller
www.crucialp.com

xjs’s picture

xjs commented

I didn't know this memory thing before. That's very good know.
As for my.cnf configuration, I compared mine with this: http://drupal.org/node/85768. They are quite different. I'll try to study this more or submit a ticket (crucial has always been responsive regarding tickets:-)
Last thing I want to find out is eventually whether I'll be able to go back to apache 2 and php 5. To be honest, I don't know if I am missing anything with the older version (for drupal). I just assume in general new versions should give better performance (or maybe not?). I noticed that my shared hosting provider (hostmonster) has upgraded apache from 1.3 to 2.

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xjs’s picture

xjs commented

Just a quick update. My site has been running fine for about a month until yesterday. It started to has some traffic a week ago. Yesterday there were 66 visitors (according to google). I got several "high server load" warningings and I cannot connect to my site myself.
I am wondering with 256 MB and cPanel, how much traffic can a drupal site hold? I was asked to upgrade my plan, which I didn't expect to happen so soon.
thanks.

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silverwing’s picture

silverwing commented

is that with cPanel (or Plesk) you want at least 512mb. 256mb will work with lxadmin, but cPanel is too much of a resource hog.

~silverwing

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bomarmonk’s picture

bomarmonk commented

I wonder if Google Analytics, Google Sitemapping and XML-sitemap can cause problems for shared hosting. Certainly, by activating some of these modules, you invite Google to page through your site. There is also a speed setting for how fast Google is allowed to index your site. You can turn the speed of this down if you are using Google to index a sitemap.

Kaumil’s picture

Kaumil commented

Are you using VPS with cPanel? Have them remove the mailman service, that does tend to take up a lot of RAM. PHP5 should still be used -- it's the latest and doesn't have bugs. If this doesn't help, then instead of forking out money for a solution that doesn't work or will eventually do the same thing when you grow, find something scalable.

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wwwoliondorcom’s picture

wwwoliondorcom commented

Huge memory usage on Dreamhost VPS, how to find which module causes troubles ?

Hi,

I have the same problem, how can i find what is the module that uses too much memory on my dreamhost virtual private server ?

Thanks.

silverwing’s picture

silverwing commented

closing comments on this thread - if you're still having problems, feel free to start a new thread.

~silverwing