[Imc-web] Re: [IMC-Tech] Tue Jan 17 Apache stop/start

[Zachary C. Miller]

We have these spikes constantly. This has been discussed in the past
on the imc-tech email list. No one has had the time to spend the
effort to debug them. The efforts that have been spent have been
inconclusive. Apache processes get stuck in some kind of infinite busy
wait loop BEFORE they write a log entry so it is hard to figure out
what is causing the problem. I believe it to be a problem with our
version of Dada.

The only thing keeping the server alive is an hourly restart of apache
by cron. This is ludicrous.

There are two things that need to be done anyway which may or may not
solve the problem:

1) Transition the whole server to apache2. 

2) Upgrade ALL our dada installs to the latest version of Dada which
was released late in 2005.

(1) takes a lot of time because we have a ton of vhosts that will all
need to be tested.

(2) takes a lot of time because we have a ton of local patches to our
dada code that no one has kept track of.

I am still looking for someone to volunteer to take on one or both of
these tasks. I will gladly provide oversight, pointers, and help to
whoever takes it on but it has to be someone with decent linux admin,
apache admin, and php experience.

One easy way to find out if the spikes are caused by dada would be to
temporarily disable dada for a few days and see if the spikes go
away. This would also mean the IMC part of the website would be down
but it might be worth it for the data we'd gather. I think I proposed
this a while ago but dropped the ball on following up with it because
of the chaos of the holidays.

daniel wrote:
> where there any access errors or server errors that would lead to the
> cause of the spikes?
> On 1/17/06, Daniel Lewart <lewart at uiuc.edu> wrote:
> > Zach, et al,
> >
> > Twice today I had to stop Apache because it was sucking up
> > CPU and then restart it.
> >
> > According to /var/log/uptime.log, at 16:41:39 the Load Average was 62.
> > When it gets this high, the mail queues effectively stop.
> >
> > Cheers,
> > Dan
> > _______________________________________________
> > IMC-Tech mailing list
> > IMC-Tech at lists.ucimc.org
> > http://lists.chambana.net/cgi-bin/listinfo/imc-tech
> >
> 
> 
> --
> Thanks,
> Daniel Meredith
> Professional Geek
> _______________________
> Champaign, IL 61820
> 
> 217.714.2738 (ph)
> dan.blah at gmail.com
> _______________________________________________
> IMC-Tech mailing list
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> 

-- 
Zachary C. Miller - @= - http://zach.chambana.net/
IMSA 1995 - UIUC 2000 - Just Another Leftist Muppet - Ya Basta!
 Social Justice, Community, Nonviolence, Decentralization, Feminism,
 Sustainability, Responsibility, Diversity, Democracy, Ecology