Internal Error - 500 - unable to track down... :(

[.Ian]

Hi

Not sure if anyone can assist me.

If I run my site with 128mb of memory, then I periodically get an internal server error

[Sun Jun 22 18:56:39.967995 2014] [:error] [pid 5451] [client x.x.x.x:56528] PHP Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 18359 bytes) in /home2/xxxxx/public_html/admin/sources/base/ipsMeipsMember.php on line 2951

is the first error I received tonight.

I have been running memory at 512mb which is crazy, but at least I do not get any internal server errors then.

However switched back to 128mb a few hours ago.

So the error is not immediate.

Nothing (that I can find) was running in the scheduler then, that has not run before whilst memory has been at 128mb, so am a bit confused.

Anyone have any idea as to how I can track this down?

Am currently back at 256mb to see if it happens again. But is hard to know if it has happened unless I happen to be on the website, then I find out it has been down for an hour or so.....

The admin section is unaffected by the error.

Thanks in advance....

[AlexJ]

May be start disabling hook one by one and see if error clears up? I was having that issue once and issue was with one hook... So i removed it and no issue their after.

[Dmacleo]

maybe setup free pingdom monitor on it which will tell you within moments when its down?

may help narrow down actual timeframes to start looking when you are not actually on the site.

[.Ian]

Thanks - sadly pingdom is no longer free - it seems it was taken over last week.

However I have installed port-monitor.com, so thanks for the suggestion.

I have disabled all hooks, but still got the same issue.

This is not a new issue, and has been there for a while, but I would rather try and run the site at a decent memory limit, so am trying again.

Am currently running with 256mb to see if it will stay steady at that. With the monitor at least I will know if it goes down.

All very odd....

[Dmacleo]

maybe I grandfathered but I still have pingdom, only get 1 check but....all I need :P

[Rugger]

Just generally as this thread mentions memory usage (slight hijack).. how much memory should be allocated? 128/256/512? I run IPB on a dedicated server with 16GB RAM and the usage never goes above 6GB. Would raising the memory limit increase performance? and to what level would be good?

Thanks

[.Ian]

You 'should' only need 128mb

Setting it any higher is not recommended.

Unless you run out of memory, which is usually caused by a script running and requiring a greater amount either by design (managing a large unusual task) or by a fault.

That is my issue - working out what is causing it.

[Grumpy]

Just generally as this thread mentions memory usage (slight hijack).. how much memory should be allocated? 128/256/512? I run IPB on a dedicated server with 16GB RAM and the usage never goes above 6GB. Would raising the memory limit increase performance? and to what level would be good?

Thanks

This is a setting for each php process, not total. And no, it will not increase perf.

You 'should' only need 128mb

Setting it any higher is not recommended.

Unless you run out of memory, which is usually caused by a script running and requiring a greater amount either by design (managing a large unusual task) or by a fault.

That is my issue - working out what is causing it.

Its generally hard to find out the perp through live site. You'll need to setup a test clone of it and run it with xdebug or a similar profiler. Then you may be able to track down by section. You shouldn't run xdebug profiler on live site as the resource required to run it is much greater than the site itself.