Enhance server performance

[dsxs]

Hi to all professionals

I've got a Intel Celeron 2,4Ghz Server with 512MB RAM and Suse Linux 9.3 Pro with Plesk 7.5.4 installed.

At the moment there are 5 low-traffic domains and a few e-mail accounts being hosted, so no big deal really.

However, I believe the server is acting slower than it's supposed to.

To send email, it usually takes around 20 seconds 'till the mail client is properly connected to the server and the email is being transmitted.

Also, all the running processes on the server eat up so much RAM (of which I've only got 512MB), that the usage of such is permanantly between 95% and 98%.
Strange about this is, that the server sometimes doesn't respond to any requests anymore - I cannot login to Plesk, no connection to the POP3/IMAP and SMTP servers, apache does not answer anymore.... this behavior stops after about two minutes and everything is back to normal again, until 15 minutes later.

I've noticed that when I disable Spamassassin, it will free about 150MB of RAM, and the server starts to run significantly faster.
Also, it then doesn't happen anymore that the different services stop responding for two minutes.

So, I come to the conclusion that someting is eating up to much memory, which then causes my server to "overflow".

In pesk, I've seen that 1GB of disk space is reserved for cache Swap. However, I've never seen the scale go further than 0% usage. Is this normal?
Is there a way to activate the swap partition so the RAM usage will be lower?

Here are the different proceses:

PID TTY TIME CMD
1 ? 00:00:00 init
2 ? 00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
3 ? 00:00:00 events/0
4 ? 00:00:00 khelper
9 ? 00:00:00 kthread
19 ? 00:00:00 kacpid
88 ? 00:00:00 kblockd/0
128 ? 00:00:00 pdflush
129 ? 00:00:00 pdflush
131 ? 00:00:00 aio/0
130 ? 00:00:00 kswapd0
723 ? 00:00:00 kseriod
1045 ? 00:00:02 kjournald
1943 ? 00:00:00 udevd
3204 ? 00:00:00 hwscand
3656 ? 00:00:00 khpsbpkt
4289 ? 00:00:00 dhcpcd
4398 ? 00:00:01 syslog-ng
4401 ? 00:00:00 klogd
4601 ? 00:00:00 powersaved
4646 ? 00:00:00 sshd
4677 ? 00:00:00 ntpd
4717 ? 00:00:01 nscd
4817 ? 00:00:00 named
4836 ? 00:00:00 mysqld_safe
4871 ? 00:11:15 mysqld
4981 ? 00:00:01 httpd2-prefork
4997 ? 00:00:00 httpsd
5001 ? 00:00:04 httpsd
5002 ? 00:00:03 httpsd
5003 ? 00:00:04 httpsd
5004 ? 00:00:04 httpsd
5005 ? 00:00:02 httpsd
5046 ? 00:00:03 httpsd
5053 ? 00:00:00 cron
5075 tty1 00:00:00 mingetty
5086 ? 00:00:03 httpsd
6399 ? 00:00:01 httpd2-prefork
6400 ? 00:00:00 httpd2-prefork
6401 ? 00:00:02 httpd2-prefork
6402 ? 00:00:06 httpd2-prefork
6403 ? 00:00:05 httpd2-prefork
6419 ? 00:00:02 httpsd
6431 ? 00:00:02 httpsd
6489 ? 00:00:02 httpd2-prefork
6490 ? 00:00:02 httpd2-prefork
6736 ttyS0 00:00:00 agetty
9173 ? 00:00:02 httpd2-prefork
9174 ? 00:00:02 httpd2-prefork
9178 ? 00:00:02 httpd2-prefork
9225 ? 00:00:00 xinetd
10348 ? 00:00:00 qmail-send
10350 ? 00:00:00 splogger
10351 ? 00:00:00 qmail-lspawn
10352 ? 00:00:00 qmail-rspawn
10353 ? 00:00:00 qmail-clean
10433 ? 00:00:00 couriertcpd
10435 ? 00:00:00 courierlogger
10444 ? 00:00:00 couriertcpd
10446 ? 00:00:00 courierlogger
10453 ? 00:00:00 couriertcpd
10455 ? 00:00:00 courierlogger
10463 ? 00:00:00 couriertcpd
10465 ? 00:00:00 courierlogger
13856 ? 00:00:01 spamd
13858 ? 00:00:01 spamd
13859 ? 00:00:00 spamd
13860 ? 00:00:00 spamd
13861 ? 00:00:00 spamd
13862 ? 00:00:01 spamd
13863 ? 00:00:01 spamd
13910 ? 00:00:02 monit
13912 ? 00:00:00 spamd
13913 ? 00:00:00 spamd
13914 ? 00:00:00 spamd
13915 ? 00:00:00 spamd
13916 ? 00:00:00 spamd
18579 ? 00:00:00 sshd
18582 pts/0 00:00:00 bash
18794 pts/0 00:00:00 ps

I have absolutely no clue what most of this is supposed to be, but I'm wondering why I've got so many "spamd", or "httpsd" and "http2-prefork" processes running.


I would be most gratefull if someone could point me to a solution to my problem.

Thanks in advance,

Steve

 

[teratec]

Hello,

i have the same problem. The server is very slow!!! I must wait 20 seconds before i can see my website.

Plesk is a bad software product with many mistakes. I need one week for installing the server, but now he is very very slow with MySQL.

Before i use Confixx 2.0 and the server was very fast.

 

[poke]

what mysql release are you using? and PHP?

 

[teratec]

Helo,

i use MySQL 4.0.18 on Suse Linux 9.1 and Plesk 7.5, Apache2

I think one problem could be

rcapache2 extreme-configtest
Syntax: NOT OK:
httpd2-prefork: could not open document config file /home/httpd/vhosts/domain/conf/httpd.include

I can´t find a solution for the problem.

 

[CCHickman]

A few things --

First off, PLESK is the control panel -- most of the other processes, while being installed with PLESK, are independent of PLESK - such as SpamAssassin and Apache -- PLESK really just serves as a front end for configuration.

If you run 'top' from your shell or use another method for viewing resources, you WILL most likely see most of your resources being in use. That is true of my box too -- for some reason, Linux makes the most of your resources by using them at all times [shrugs] --

I'm not sure why teratec's sites take 20 seconds - that's ridiculous.

I would recommend having a little more RAM to work with ... I'm on a 1&1 Box with 2GB of RAM (I think.)

I don't use the PLESK version of SpamAssassin, rather, I installed Atomic Rocket Turtle's (and then configured it -- without configuring it, you may as well not bother) and have kept everything on my server up to date ...

I had a problem with my server slowing down to a grind a while back where there were a huge # of child processes of both mysql and httpd -- and I found that removing and reinstalling/upgrading seemed to fix the problem.

There are many people on this board that offer their services to help out. Some are pretty cheap - some will charge quite a bit and call you a girl's name (Atomic Rocket Turtle) - but always know what they are doing. It depends on what your needs are.

If you are a novice in Linux, I would be glad to poke around on your box, upgrade everything, test everything to my own knowledge, and see if that corrects the problem.

 

[remote-admin]

need tune

Hello,

You need to optimize mysql and apache settings for your usage.

Best Regards,
Dmitry.

 

[jshanley]

Quick notes

1. Make sure you have enough file descriptors.
2. Make sure you don't have apache configured to run too MANY processes.
3. Make sure you have apache configured to run enough processes.
4. Make sure you have Qmail configured not to do reverse-dns lookups, using -Rt0 .. ex:

smtp stream tcp nowait root /usr/local/psa/qmail/bin/tcp-env tcp-env -Rt0 [...]

5. Make sure you don't have qmail configured to run too many mail processes at one time; this will easily kill your box.
6. Make sure you don't have SpamAssassin set to run too many processes. This will also kill your box (each instance of SpamAssassin eats ~ 7-8 mb of ram).

There's more, but it really depends on your specific load, configuration, etc etc.

 

[teratec]

Thank you very much for all the hints!!! I will try them.

 

[Bart]

The problem is probably due to reverse DNS lookups.

There's a thread on the forum that describes how to disable it in FreeBSD. Problably it's not that different in Linux. You can find the thread at http://forum.swsoft.com/showthread.php?threadid=20843&highlight=reverse DNS lookup

Best regards,
Bart