Question for you log reading gurus...

[nhouse]

Good Morning...

Please look at these log entries and tell me what they mean. I am still learning and don't want to jump to the wrong conclusion;

taken from /var/log/messages
Dec 25 00:56:02 nhousemedia named[11106]: client 208.62.149.34#28443: update 'railway-claim-services.com/IN' denied
Dec 25 00:56:03 nhousemedia named[11106]: client 208.62.149.34#28449: update 'railway-claim-services.com/IN' denied

Dec 28 13:48:16 nhousemedia xinetd[11907]: smtp: fork failed: Cannot allocate memory (errno = 12)
Dec 28 13:48:17 nhousemedia syslogd: select: Cannot allocate memory
Dec 28 13:48:17 nhousemedia xinetd[11907]: smtp: fork failed: Cannot allocate memory (errno = 12)

Thanks for your insight!

 

[Cranky]

Are you running a VPS?

 

[nhouse]

Yes... sorry that I didn't give those details. RH9, VPS, PSA 7.5.3

 

[Cranky]

Run the following via SSH and paste me the output:

cat /proc/user_beancounters

When pasing the output put it inside [ PHP ] tags [/ PHP] (without the spaces) so it's easier to read (it preserves the spacing).

 

[nhouse]

Thanks... here is the result:

Version: 2.5
       uid  resource           held    maxheld    barrier      limit    failcnt
      4163: kmemsize        6154044    6156846   16384000   18022400       2406
            lockedpages           0          0        650        650          0
            privvmpages       93779      93821     262144     262144         24
            shmpages           1035       1035     131072     131072          0
            dummy                 0          0          0          0          0
            numproc              91         91        425        425          0
            physpages         43663      43665          0 2147483647          0
            vmguarpages           0          0      65536 2147483647          0
            oomguarpages      60730      60732      65536 2147483647          0
            numtcpsock           24         24        500        500          0
            numflock              6          6        325        325          0
            numpty                1          1         64         64          0
            numsiginfo            0          0        512        512          0
            tcpsndbuf         11100      11100    5365760   10485760          0
            tcprcvbuf             0       4268    5365760   10485760          0
            othersockbuf      23736      23736    1503232    4063232          0
            dgramrcvbuf           0          0     235930     262144          0
            numothersock         49         49        500        500          0
            dcachesize       798883     800813    4194304    4317184          0
            numfile            1666       1667       8192       8192          0
            dummy                 0          0          0          0          0
            dummy                 0          0          0          0          0
            dummy                 0          0          0          0          0
            numiptent            10         10        500        500          0

 

[Cranky]

That's your problem, you're exceeding kmemsize and privvmpages limits. These are both memory limits on your VPS which are controlled by your provider. I would suggest asking your provider if they can increase the limits, but it'll probably mean you need to upgrade to a higher VPS package. Alternatively, you can try to reduce memory usage by removing unnecessary services (Tomcat, SpamAssassin, DrWeb, perhaps?).

kmemsize = 2406 fails

This is kernel memory stored in RAM.

privvmpages = 24 fails

This is your main problem, it's the limit of memory (RAM+Swap) you can use which you keep reaching.

Each fail is where your VPS tries to get more of a particular resource than is available to it.

 

[nhouse]

Thanks so much... I REALLY appreciate you taking the time to assist me. I am learning more and more from these forums because of kind folks like yourself. I have dealt with Linux at the GUI level for a while... but only for a few months at the command line level. It is fun learning BUT when issues arrise and clients complain... well, you know...

I suppose the real answer is to consider going to a real dedicated server solution. Now... where to find the money....

 

[nhouse]

Well... back to the issue. I am not trying to bust GoDaddy... BUT if the printout above refers to byte size... are they shorting me my allocation? They are suppose to allow me the following:

RAM: 256 MB Guaranteed (1 GB Bursted)

 

[Cranky]

Originally posted by nhouse
I suppose the real answer is to consider going to a real dedicated server solution. Now... where to find the money....

Not necessarily, you've got just 256MB guaranteed memory, 1GB maximum memory. You can easily scale that to a higher-end VPS. For my clients I consider that the minimum specification for a VPS with Plesk but recommend more.

 

[Cranky]

Originally posted by nhouse
Well... back to the issue. I am not trying to bust GoDaddy... BUT if the printout above refers to byte size... are they shorting me my allocation? They are suppose to allow me the following:

RAM: 256 MB Guaranteed (1 GB Bursted)

Nope, they're in 4KB pages so you need to divide by 256 to get the MB values of privvmpages (burstable/limit) and vmguarpages (guaranteed).

 

[nhouse]

Thanks again Cranky.

 

[Cranky]

You're welcome.

 

[nhouse]

Now that I've had my second cup of coffee, I have a couple of questions in regards to this thread.

1. Those logs (the second set) were generated at a time when my Qmail system stalled. When the memory maxes like that, could it kill Qmail? Or maybe when the CPU usage spikes real high? If so, is this more prevelant in a VPS setup?

2. Also, it seems like you must have great experience with VPS setup situations from your posts and you website offerings... how many domains do you recommend on a VPS, as far as a max number? Is there a rule of thumb... or do you try to calculate upon individual site needs?

 

[Cranky]

Yes, it's very likely that reaching privvmpages parameter killed qmail.

It's impossible to say how many domains per VPS, but higher end VPS's can carry a lot more than lower end. It depends exactly what each VPS is doing. You just need to watch for fails or a slow-down to see if it's time to upgrade. Our high-end VPS packages are capable of hosting a lot more domains than budget dedicated servers. I'm a big fan of VPS technology, it's easier to manage, scaleable, stable and brings cost savings due to increased hardware utilisation.

 

[nhouse]

OK, more info after talking with GoDaddy... I sent them a help ticket showing them the results of the command referenced above. They cent me this back as a reply:

Thank you for contacting customer support. It appears you have reached your MaxClients setting. When this happens, you will experience the side effects explained in your Trouble Ticket.

To update your max clients setting
1. Using SSH, log on to your server with blah, blah.
2. At the command line, enter blah, blah blah
3. Open /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf in your text editor. (We recommend "vi", so the command would be: vi
etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf)
4. Change the line "MaxClients = 10" to a larger number (note, there are two entries for this that both need to be modified).
5. Save and close httpd.conf.

Again, I am a newbie in many ways and had no idea this was even something to be wary of. I did as they instructed and set the limits to "100." Considering what GoDaddy said... could that have also added to my issues?

Another thing to note... when I do certain things which call heavily on MySQL, I get warnings like this from 4PSA's Server Assistant:

EVENT:
=====
/usr/libexec/mysqld consumed the following resources at Fri Dec 30 13:36:02 CST 2005:

CPU Usage: 99.9 (limit 90)
Memory Usage: 0.2 (limit 20)

This happens sometimes when I administer SpamAssassin changes to domains with 60 or more email addresses. I also use 4PSA's Spam Guardian for this. The processor on the VPS host machine is a Intel(R) Xeon(TM) CPU 2.80GHz, by the way.

 

[Cranky]

Hi,

You sent GoDaddy this:

Dec 28 13:48:16 nhousemedia xinetd[11907]: smtp: fork failed: Cannot allocate memory (errno = 12)

And they replied telling you to increase MaxClients in /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf?

 

[nhouse]

No... to be clear, I sent them the read out of the cat /proc/user_beancounters command that I generated with your help. I should revise my ticket to them with the log entries as well... it's been a log day already and I forgot to include it.

 

[Cranky]

Originally posted by nhouse
No... to be clear, I sent them the read out of the cat /proc/user_beancounters command that I generated with your help. I should revise my ticket to them with the log entries as well... it's been a log day already and I forgot to include it.

Hmm ... if I was you I wouldn't even bother. There is nothing at all in /proc/user_beancounters which can possibly indicate that MaxClients is being reached. If that was one of my techs they would be apologising to you now and would be explaining to me why they've suddendly forgotten how the Virtuozzo platform works.

The MySQL issue could possibly be caused by your VPS not having enough resources. I would imagine that GoDaddy offer more CPU on their higher VPS packages also, which might fix things for you?

It may save resources if you were to disable 4PSA Spam Assistant as spamassassin is fairly heavy on memory and cpu. Obviously, if you need these then that's not a wise move.

Off topic, do GoDaddy offer 4PSA apps, or did you install those yourself separately?

 

[nhouse]

Thank you for your candor... maybe GoDaddy has a way to look over my previous complaint(s) and came up with this... or maybe it is just in their (tech proceedures) script... who knows.

I sold my clients on SPAM / Virus filtering so I am stuck with it I suppose. I may increase my RAM allocation though to be safe... I know GoDaddy can do that.

As far as 4PSA goes, they do not offer their software. I found out about them through the forums here and purchased / intalled them myself. I feel comfortable with their abilities and their software is good for nwbies like me.

Thanks Again!

 

[Cranky]

Yep, I'd recommend upgrading the memory.

Perhaps you ought to consider looking around for other VPS providers also as given GoDaddy's response above I suspect there's a lot that you could benefit from with a more helpful provider.