Unusually high memory usage on VPS with DA

agnivo007

agnivo007

Verified User
Joined
Nov 25, 2006
Messages
345
Location
India
VPS Config : OpenVZ based VPS (HyperVM), 150Mhz share of each 16 xeon CPUs, 512MB guaranteed and 2GB burst RAM, OSTemplate centos-5-afull-i386

After I installed DirectAdmin, I see RAM usage shooting upto 500MB and avg. usage is around 425MB which is unusually high for an unused or idling system. No sites have been added or are being served that could use up memory; just a stock DA install. Rebooting the VM also didn't help, it just sticks to 425MB of RAM usage.

I was about to add sites, but in idling state, I got a QoS message regarding RAM (512MB is guaranteed limit). I have used many other VPSs before and DA stock install would only take up 125MB or so. So, this looks very unusual to me.

Code: 
# uname -r
2.6.18-53.1.6.el5.028stab053.6

# free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          2048        491       1556          0          0          0
-/+ buffers/cache:        491       1556
Swap:            0          0          0

# pstree -G
init─┬─crond
     ├─da-popb4smtp
     ├─directadmin───5*[directadmin]
     ├─dovecot─┬─dovecot-auth
     │         ├─16*[imap-login]
     │         └─16*[pop3-login]
     ├─exim
     ├─httpd───5*[httpd]
     ├─mysqld_safe───mysqld───mysqld───mysqld
     ├─named───18*[{named}]
     ├─proftpd
     ├─spamd───2*[spamd]
     ├─sshd───sshd───bash───pstree
     ├─syslogd
     └─xinetd

# ps aux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM    VSZ   RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
root         1  0.0  0.0   2040   656 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 init [3]
root     16146  0.0  0.0   1704   580 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 syslogd -m 0
root     16169  0.0  0.0   1828   576 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 dovecot
root     16170  0.0  0.0   2344  1056 ?        S    09:55   0:00 dovecot-auth
root     16183  0.0  0.0   6184  1032 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/sshd
root     16192  0.0  0.0   2684   856 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 xinetd -stayalive -pidfile /var/run/xinetd.pid
root     16203  0.0  0.0   2416  1124 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysqld_safe --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --pid-
mysql    16227  0.0  0.1  89100  3788 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/ --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user
mysql    16229  0.0  0.1  89100  3788 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/ --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user
mysql    16231  0.0  0.1  89100  3788 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/mysqld --basedir=/ --datadir=/var/lib/mysql --user
dovecot  16251  0.0  0.0   4804  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16252  0.0  0.0   4804  1736 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16253  0.0  0.0   4800  1728 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16254  0.0  0.0   4800  1728 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16255  0.0  0.0   4804  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16256  0.0  0.0   4804  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16257  0.0  0.0   4804  1736 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16258  0.0  0.0   4804  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16259  0.0  0.0   4804  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16260  0.0  0.0   4804  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16261  0.0  0.0   4800  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16262  0.0  0.0   4800  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16263  0.0  0.0   4800  1728 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16264  0.0  0.0   4804  1732 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16265  0.0  0.0   4800  1736 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16267  0.0  0.0   4800  1728 ?        S    09:55   0:00 pop3-login
dovecot  16268  0.0  0.0   4808  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16269  0.0  0.0   4808  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16270  0.0  0.0   4804  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16271  0.0  0.0   4808  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16272  0.0  0.0   4808  1744 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16273  0.0  0.0   4808  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16274  0.0  0.0   4804  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16275  0.0  0.0   4804  1736 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16276  0.0  0.0   4804  1736 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16277  0.0  0.0   4804  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16278  0.0  0.0   4804  1736 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16279  0.0  0.0   4804  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16280  0.0  0.0   4808  1744 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16281  0.0  0.0   4808  1740 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16282  0.0  0.0   4808  1744 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
dovecot  16283  0.0  0.0   4804  1736 ?        S    09:55   0:00 imap-login
root     16338  0.0  0.0   3068   540 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 /usr/local/directadmin/da-popb4smtp
nobody   16346  0.0  0.0   8680  1292 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 /usr/local/directadmin/directadmin d
mail     16359  0.0  0.0   8780  1076 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/exim -bd -q15m -oP /var/run/exim.pid
nobody   17410  0.0  0.0   8680   568 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/local/directadmin/directadmin d
nobody   17411  0.0  0.0   8680   568 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/local/directadmin/directadmin d
nobody   17412  0.0  0.0   8680   568 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/local/directadmin/directadmin d
nobody   17413  0.0  0.0   8680   568 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/local/directadmin/directadmin d
nobody   17414  0.0  0.0   8680   568 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/local/directadmin/directadmin d
root     17420  0.0  1.3  30308 27804 ?        Ss   09:55   0:02 /usr/bin/spamd -d -c -m 5
root     17448  0.0  0.5 157744 10952 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -k start -DSSL
ftp      17459  0.0  0.0   5780  1168 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 proftpd: (accepting connections)
root     17467  0.0  0.0   3188  1108 ?        Ss   09:55   0:00 crond
apache   17474  0.0  0.4 157744  9208 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -k start -DSSL
apache   17475  0.0  0.4 157744  9200 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -k start -DSSL
apache   17476  0.0  0.4 157744  9200 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -k start -DSSL
apache   17477  0.0  0.4 157744  9200 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -k start -DSSL
apache   17478  0.0  0.4 157744  9200 ?        S    09:55   0:00 /usr/sbin/httpd -k start -DSSL
root     17496  0.0  1.2  30308 26200 ?        S    09:55   0:00 spamd child
root     17497  0.0  1.2  30308 26120 ?        S    09:55   0:00 spamd child
named    17581  0.0  0.1 191888  3620 ?        Ssl  09:56   0:00 named -u named
root     18144  0.0  0.1   9028  2720 ?        Ss   20:51   0:00 sshd: root@pts/0
root     19675  0.0  0.0   2420  1308 pts/0    Ss   20:51   0:00 -bash
root     29947  4.5  0.1   7812  2504 ?        Ss   20:55   0:00 sshd: unknown [priv]
sshd     29983  2.0  0.0   7532  1308 ?        S    20:55   0:00 sshd: unknown [net]
root     30139  0.0  0.0   2148   816 pts/0    R+   20:55   0:00 ps aux

Any suggestion how this can be brought back to normal? Need to sort this out before I go ahead to add sites.
 
I wish smtalk could comment on this. I haven't seen him on messenger for the last 3 days though.
 
It would be great if I could take a look at the server.
 
OK, this was solved by my host. They tuned the CPU share and installed the PAE kernel. (strange they forgot it on a 32GB RAM node lol)

However, now I want to tune the number of child processes some daemons are creating. Like, I don't think named would need 18 clildren eating up my precious VPS memory. I'd also like to limit children count of imap and pop3. Any guide?
 
By default, named creates a thread for each processor.
You can tell it to create fixed number of threads in /etc/sysconfig/named
OPTIONS="-n 1"
will create only 1 thread. Then, restart named.
 
agnivo007 said:
OK, this was solved by my host. They tuned the CPU share and installed the PAE kernel. (strange they forgot it on a 32GB RAM node lol)

However, now I want to tune the number of child processes some daemons are creating. Like, I don't think named would need 18 clildren eating up my precious VPS memory. I'd also like to limit children count of imap and pop3. Any guide?
Click to expand...
For the imap/pop processes, edit this:
/etc/dovecot.conf

and change the number of login_processes_count.
 
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