We moved to a VPS and the index.php file in the root directory of the board is always causing a high CPU usage. Is there anything that can help bring that down?

Note that PHP is a server side scripting language, which means that every time a page with PHP is requested (e.g. the homepage of your forums), another PHP process is started and ran. If you have a lot of traffic, the load on your server will increase as each PHP script is requested. Firstly, I advise that you restart your HTTP server. This usually helps "runaway" PHP processes. If that doesn't help, you should tweak your HTTP and PHP configurations to limit traffic or load. There are also options in IPB server environment to do similar things. It's also possible that another VPS user on the same physical server as you is using a lot of CPU which would also affect you because the resources are shared to some degree. You can also use something called htop that you run in commandline (have to download it from repos) that'll give you details on what your processes are doing. Are you using a hosting panel like cpanel or straight Apache + PHP + MySql or similar?

Index.php is generally almost the entire forum so that's going to be quite difficult, I suggest changing some settings to minimize queries and scripts running, remove any optional blocks from your forum and possibly even putting it in performance mode.

Also, turn off GZip and load Javascript from Google in the optimization settings.

Already turned the gzip off earlier today and the JS has been from google. One thing I did that has seemed to help so far is limiting the frequency of the bots. Prior to reducing them, we had 16k hits in 11 hours. The 500 errors have stopped.

If you have not already, disable as many hooks as you can, most importantly any 3rd party hooks which may be poorly optimized.

In the "CPU Saving & Optimization" section, I toggled:

• Cache calendar and birthdays?
• Kill long running search queries.
• Show Board Totals?
• Disable Profile Statistics?

 

• Cache calendar and birthdays?

• Kill long running search queries.

• Show Board Totals?

• Disable Profile Statistics?

If you go to Support in your IPB ACP and go to SQL Toolbox and check all and hit Optimize Selected Tables and hit Go that might help you some

 

If you have not already, disable as many hooks as you can, most importantly any 3rd party hooks which may be poorly optimized.

First thing that I tried with no success. I did find one that was sometimes producing bad sql errors and it's still disabled.

 

• Cache calendar and birthdays?

• Kill long running search queries.

• Show Board Totals?

• Disable Profile Statistics?

Tried those too.

 

If you go to Support in your IPB ACP and go to SQL Toolbox and check all and hit Optimize Selected Tables and hit Go that might help you some

Tried that too.


Thanks for the replies. This all started after going from shared to a VPS. I'm just wondering now if the Apache/PHP/MYSQL need proper tweaking.

  PID USER  	PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM	TIME+  COMMAND

1216 linc2 	19   0  159m  36m  19m R 24.6  2.7   0:00.74 php

1209 linc2 	20   0  158m  35m  19m R 19.6  2.6   0:00.83 php

1215 linc2 	17   0  157m  32m  17m R 18.0  2.4   0:00.54 php

1213 linc2 	19   0 	0	0	0 Z 14.3  0.0   0:00.53 php <defunct>

1202 linc2 	21   0 	0	0	0 Z  0.0  0.0   0:00.64 php <defunct>

 

First thing that I tried with no success. I did find one that was sometimes producing bad sql errors and it's still disabled.

Tried those too.

Tried that too.

Thanks for the replies. This all started after going from shared to a VPS. I'm just wondering now if the Apache/PHP/MYSQL need proper tweaking.

  PID USER  	PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM	TIME+  COMMAND

1216 linc2 	19   0  159m  36m  19m R 24.6  2.7   0:00.74 php

1209 linc2 	20   0  158m  35m  19m R 19.6  2.6   0:00.83 php

1215 linc2 	17   0  157m  32m  17m R 18.0  2.4   0:00.54 php

1213 linc2 	19   0 	0	0	0 Z 14.3  0.0   0:00.53 php <defunct>

1202 linc2 	21   0 	0	0	0 Z  0.0  0.0   0:00.64 php <defunct>

What hosting control panel are you using (e.g. cPanel, Kloxo, etc)?

 

What hosting control panel are you using (e.g. cPanel, Kloxo, etc)?

cPanel and Virtuozzo

System




CENTOS 5.6 x86_64


MYSQL 5.1.56


PHP Version 5.2.17 (cgi-fcgi)


Apache/2.2.19


Total processors: 1

Processor #1   Intel® Xeon® CPU E5620 @ 2.40GHz

Speed 2394.069 MHz

Cache 12288 KB

Memory 1.3GB


memcached is installed

Usually the memory usage is less than 50%. just the server load and CPU % are high

 

cPanel and Virtuozzo

Try this: https://support.amhosting.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=80&nav=0,18

Well, after adjusting apache/php/sql, my friend ended up upgrading to the next level of vps, so far so good though.

It happens a lot going from shared hosting to vps. WIth shared hosting you have access to all of the server resources and if they are not tied up by other accounts then it is like having a really nice dedicated server. The problem with shared though is if you get a couple of accounts on it that are using a lot of resources then everyone suffers. Shared servers are usually fairly stout as far as hardware goes.

Once you make the switch to vps you are restricted to your allotment of resources which explains the high loads depending how much traffic you have.

 

It happens a lot going from shared hosting to vps. WIth shared hosting you have access to all of the server resources and if they are not tied up by other accounts then it is like having a really nice dedicated server. The problem with shared though is if you get a couple of accounts on it that are using a lot of resources then everyone suffers. Shared servers are usually fairly stout as far as hardware goes.

Once you make the switch to vps you are restricted to your allotment of resources which explains the high loads depending how much traffic you have.

Yeah, I agree. The thing was, everything was fine on the site with shared, then all of a sudden the host blocked it and said that it was spiking too much of a server load. I still blame the bots a little. I should start a topic to see how many bots visit a site within a 24 hour period.

 

Yeah, I agree. The thing was, everything was fine on the site with shared, then all of a sudden the host blocked it and said that it was spiking too much of a server load. I still blame the bots a little. I should start a topic to see how many bots visit a site within a 24 hour period.

You can use analytical software in your control panel or external (e.g. Google Analytics) to accomplish the same task.

Got both running. I think before I had made changes to the robots.txt and to analytic s, we had 18,000 visits in 12 hours. Not sure if that's high, low, or normal for indexing visits. Never really compare it to a comparable busy site.

 

Got both running. I think before I had made changes to the robots.txt and to analytic s, we had 18,000 visits in 12 hours. Not sure if that's high, low, or normal for indexing visits. Never really compare it to a comparable busy site.

There are plenty of optimization tweaks within the IP.Board ACP to decrease your server load. You can use the "htop" package in console to get detailed information about each process that is running.

You can also install xcache or other cache like apc.

have memcache installed. So far with the upgrade, it's been fine. Will see in a few days.

 

Got both running. I think before I had made changes to the robots.txt and to analytic s, we had 18,000 visits in 12 hours. Not sure if that's high, low, or normal for indexing visits. Never really compare it to a comparable busy site.

Ban some bad robots.. I had to ban few on my forums..

 

Ban some bad robots.. I had to ban few on my forums..

I'm thinking of only allowing the major players