httpd locking up the server intermittently

[Spazholio@]

After upgrading to 8.4, I'm noticing that the httpd process occasionally spikes the server load up between 50 and 90, effectively bringing it down. Whenever I bounce the httpd process, the server almost instantly becomes more responsive, which is why I think it's httpd, but it could very well be the mysqld process as well. My question is this: how can I determine which site is causing the issue? Running 'top' doesn't show any process consuming excess memory or processor, so tracking it that way isn't feasible. Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[atomicturtle]

Check out: www.mod-top.org

 

[Spazholio@]

You, sir, are a scholar and a gentleman. I don't care what the other guys say.

This, combined with mytop seems to have me covered. Can you think of any other monitoring tools that are "must-haves" or even just "really-really-good-idea-to-haves".

And hey, while I've got your attention...I know that you have SA in your repos, and I've tried installing them, but it seems it's either/or when it comes to psa-spamassassin or your spamassassin. Is it possible to take your spamassassin, and just replace the Plesk-provided binary? I mean, the one provided by Plesk doesn't even have sa-update included, and I'd certainly like to get the newest version, combined with the control panel functionality.

Either way, thanks for the mod-top advice.

 

[atomicturtle]

haha, you're welcome. Nothing else out there I can think of that can compare to the utility of mod-top.

On spamassassin, absolutely. Plesk is really using the native vendor provided spamassassin, all psa-spamassassin does is provide the web interface to it (and chmod -x /etc/init.d/spamassassin... which is annoying).

 

[Spazholio@]

Ok, I'm late replying because I was with my kid in the hospital.

Now that I've gotten the sympathy vote, I'll ask the dumb clarifying question. I installed the SA package from your (ART's) repo previously, and when I did, I had both /etc/init.d/spamassassin as well as /etc/init.d/psa-spamassassin installed. I generally had them both running. If I wanted to keep Plesk's ease-of-SA-use in place but take advantage of the more recent SA build (yours), what would be the best way to accomplish that?

Please go step-by-step and use small words, as I have a 2-year-old recovering from surgery and he's rapidly sapping my sanity. Thanks again.