more on bogged down server

Mon Apr 10 22:53:12 UTC 2006

>
>> You have to reduce your load somehow.  Ideally, you should create an
anonymous FTP download directory and move all of the downloadable files
to it.  The download directory also is used as the home directory for
the anonymous FTP user (user "ftp").  I actually use a completely
separate filesystem entirely for that.  The filesystem is mounted so
that only root has write access.
>> Modify your vsftpd.conf file to permit anonymous downloads only and
start up vsftpd.  Make sure you also set the "force chroot for
anonymous users" option.  Then change your links on your web pages to
use "ftp://"-style links pointed at the anonymous download directory
paths for the downloadable files.
>> FTP is the protocol to use for large file downloads.  HTTP just isn't
efficient for that, as you've now found out (the hard way, I might
add).
>
> as the man said, dont use http for this,
>
> if you must then i suggest that you have a separate partition for your
large files and make fstab read as such (example)
>
> /dev/web /                       ext3    defaults,directio        1 1
>
> add the directio comment and the file will not go to ram, nor to swap.
this will speed up things, but you should hand the downloads over to a
different method (not http).
>

THANKS! I'll see what I can do about moving stuff to ftp. Most of the
large files are on phpwiki. I suppose I could slowly go through the pages
and change the download files (mostly scanned pdfs) from http:// to ftp://
. Any problem with having the ftp download directory being the same as the
http root directory? That way I would not have to move anything, just
change the protocol prefix on the links.

Here's another top. It looks like 98.6% of ram is being used, along with
100% of the processor. Not much swap space is being used. It kinda seems
like Apache just tries to use as much RAM and CPU as is available. I guess
this would be ok if my DSL could send the data out faster (I'm sure that's
why these threads live so long). But, it doesn't seem like it should 7% or
more of the CPU to a byte from the drive to the ethernet. Maybe ftp's just
more efficient at this?

Cpu(s): 99.7% us,  0.3% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:   1027640k total,  1013636k used,    14004k free,     7032k buffers
Swap:  2031608k total,      368k used,  2031240k free,   284780k cached
Cpu(s): 99.7% us,  0.3% sy,  0.0% ni,  0.0% id,  0.0% wa,  0.0% hi,  0.0% si
Mem:   1027640k total,  1013636k used,    14004k free,     7032k buffers
Swap:  2031608k total,      368k used,  2031240k free,   284780k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
 2414 apache    25   0 60892  35m 5644 R  6.6  3.6  14:29.37 httpd
 3231 apache    25   0 51028  25m 5480 R  6.6  2.6   8:13.30 httpd
 3683 apache    25   0 60700  35m 5404 R  6.6  3.5   7:50.11 httpd
 4082 apache    25   0 60672  34m 4580 R  6.6  3.4  13:18.66 httpd
 4577 apache    25   0 50072  24m 5320 R  6.6  2.5   1:03.57 httpd
 4578 apache    25   0 50488  25m 5392 R  6.6  2.5   4:14.42 httpd
 4592 apache    25   0 60196  34m 5168 R  6.6  3.4   5:02.36 httpd
 2411 apache    25   0 60664  34m 4908 R  5.3  3.5  22:12.54 httpd
 4548 apache    25   0 50352  23m 3804 R  4.3  2.4   4:32.46 httpd
 2410 apache    25   0 60916  35m 5388 R  3.3  3.5  24:34.60 httpd
 2412 apache    22   0 51012  25m 5508 R  3.3  2.6   8:35.88 httpd
 2415 apache    25   0 60752  35m 5532 R  3.3  3.5  20:26.07 httpd
 2417 apache    23   0 60528  35m 5556 R  3.3  3.5  33:19.76 httpd
 3239 apache    25   0 61024  35m 5544 R  3.3  3.6  12:13.21 httpd
 3365 apache    25   0 50832  25m 5596 R  3.3  2.6   6:40.87 httpd
 3379 apache    25   0 60068  34m 5480 R  3.3  3.5   4:07.17 httpd
 3923 apache    25   0 60640  34m 4660 R  3.3  3.4   9:40.94 httpd
 4482 apache    25   0 59580  34m 5428 R  3.3  3.4   0:29.00 httpd
 4848 apache    24   0 49892  24m 4868 R  3.3  2.4   0:40.70 httpd
 4989 apache    25   0 50028  22m 2964 R  3.3  2.2   2:05.30 httpd
 5380 apache    25   0 49644  22m 2952 R  3.3  2.2   0:07.94 httpd
 4826 apache    25   0 59936  33m 4712 R  3.0  3.4   2:45.52 httpd
 4582 apache    15   0 45420  20m 5532 S  0.3  2.0   0:03.01 httpd
 5431 harold    16   0  2020 1036  796 R  0.3  0.1   0:00.05 top

Again, THANKS to all for the help!

Harold

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