I am running a non-membership site. Drupal 4.7.4. I have the cache set to 9 hours and I have all non-essential modules and block (which is just about everything) set to throttle. I am still getting some huge PHP CPU spikes. Anyone have any ideas?

What more can I tell you about the situation, or is this typical even with cache and throttle on?

Thanks,

gtoddv

Comments

VM’s picture

you can install the devel module, to try and narrow down where the problem is coming from.

gtoddv’s picture

Well I can tell that the Devel module eats up more CPU cycles. Other than that, it might as well be greek to me. It shows that I have 197 queries on the front page. That seems to tell me that the cache isn't doing squat. Is the cache supposed to work?

VM’s picture

cache only works for anon users, not logged in users from what i understand. you can try caching the blocks, using the block cache module. to see if that drops any of the querries.

mudanoman’s picture

gtoddv,

I think I am getting a similar issue of cache not being activated or working properly. Here are the two issues I am facing:

1. pages still have way too many queries even with cache on (indicating that cache might not be activated or working correctly, yes its set as on in the admin settings panel)

2. for some odd reason my front_page does not show any more theming. This happened after I upgraded to 4.7.4 and changed the cache setting. This is always what drove me to look into the caching issue which was causing crashes to the server...similar to what this webmaster is experiencing: http://drupal.org/node/81012

Moreover, I notice when I check and uncheck the cache setting it does not seem to do anything --- regardless cache entries are being made to the mysql db.

Hope we can help each other out to get this resolved.

Best,

Ivan

gtoddv’s picture

OK that does give me something to start with. I will to look at the other thread. I get cache entries too even though it does not appear to be working. If I could check the devel module output as an anonymous user that would be helpful.

I also didn't know there was a block cache module. i might give that a spin.

gtoddv

mudanoman’s picture

gtoddv,

please see...
http://drupal.org/node/93312

Haven't had much luck, but will keep trying. Thought it might be helpful to you.

Peace,

Ivan

PS. It seems to log cache regardless if I am admin? Strange.... :(

gtoddv’s picture

Well since I couldn't get the cache or throttle to make a dent in resource usage, I had to take the site down (after 2.5 years) and redirect to a static html site. I don't know if I will be able to bring the site back up on it's current server. (Site5 is the host)

While I guess this could have happened no matter what version we were running, the resource problems started after upgrading to 4.7(.4) from 4.6.9. When I find a new server, I will try to do some more troubleshooting.

VM’s picture

I'm using site5's silver plan and thus far, havent run into any issues that are forcing me to not use drupal. any change you can list your modules ? so that we can see what modules may be causing issues ?

gtoddv’s picture

Modules I am using are:

book
contact
event
flexinode (on for use with event only)
forward - throttled
glossary - throttled
googleanalytics - throttled
gsitemap - throttled
image
img_assist
linksdb
menu
nice_menus
page
path
pathauto
pdfview - throttled
Relatedlinks - throttled
search
search404 - throttled
service_links - throttled
site_map - throttled
spamspan - throttled
statistics - throttled
story
syndication - throttled
throttle
tinymce
upload

Remember, this is NOT a membership portal it is a information site. The throttled modules are essentially turned off. Haven't seen them funciton since I turned on the feature. Have the cache currently set to 15 minutes but has been set has high as 9 hours. Doesn't seem to make a difference.

mudanoman’s picture

I started a cache thread that might be useful:
http://drupal.org/node/97347

gtoddv’s picture

The plan shouldn't make a difference other than in the amount of space and bandwidth. The problem lies in CPU utilization. I was averaging 7,000 unique visitors per day with an average 7 pageviews per visit. At some point, we were using 95% of the CPU on the server. I have drupal running on a number of servers over at site5. None have the same traffic so I haven't had to shut them down. I did have a postnuke site shutdown over there but it is a fairly high traffic site.

What I find a bit strange is that they claim to have improved server density, so theoretically your site should run at least the same if not better. This site didn't start having trouble until after the 'improvement'.

mudanoman’s picture

We are having issues on a AMD box with 4GB of RAM. Definitely a pretty serious issue and we have been down for over a week now :(

sepeck’s picture

How much of that RAM is set in the php.ini file. phpinfo() should tell you.

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide -|- Black Mountain

-Steven Peck
---------
Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

mudanoman’s picture

48M is set in the php.ini. The lower memory setting in php.ini tends to lead to blank pages rather than stalls / locked up site. At least my personal experience.