Very high load caused by APACHE

[psycho]

Hey,
I have a AMD 3200+ 64 bit box
with a 2gb ram
and when i look in 'top' I see about 10-15 proccess of httpd there
that usage alot of resources
Any idea? I dont have any big sites[thought]
Any fix? Anything that I can locate the site that might make this load?

Thanks alot!
guy.


Edited:
I noticed that the load isn't permanent I mean it can be between 7 to 9 for about 1hr and to be between 1 to 4 for a few hours...
I also noticed that when some reseller is backing up his users accounts the load goes up... but I checked it.. and today the load was about 7-9 for 3 hrs when no one used the backup/restore option.
Very strange , any ideas?

 

[Icheb]

First of all, like me, most people are stats crazy. Which will also help finding the root of this problem.

You should enable the extended status thing in Apache and post a .txt or something, with the extended status results here.

The extended status module will help you identify the site causing the most load, and an overview of total load at a certain time by apache.
As you stated, users running backups can be a hell for a server, I've also got issues with this, however this should not bring your entire server in a state of being really slow/not responding.

Note also that apache tends to use a lot of CPU power when getting a request, so top can be a bit strange sometimes. Like I identified our mailserver as an big load issue, while it is instead the mysqld processing terrible query's on way too much data.

 

[psycho]

First of all, like me, most people are stats crazy. Which will also help finding the root of this problem.

You should enable the extended status thing in Apache and post a .txt or something, with the extended status results here.

The extended status module will help you identify the site causing the most load, and an overview of total load at a certain time by apache.
As you stated, users running backups can be a hell for a server, I've also got issues with this, however this should not bring your entire server in a state of being really slow/not responding.

Note also that apache tends to use a lot of CPU power when getting a request, so top can be a bit strange sometimes. Like I identified our mailserver as an big load issue, while it is instead the mysqld processing terrible query's on way too much data.

I will sound a newbie but there is a option to enable extended status into txt file? any how-to guide or something it will help me thanks..

 

[psycho]

Maybe this status.txt file can help you?

 

[jmstacey]

That would be it

You might want to install the "Domain Monitor" tool which can be found in the 3rd party forums. It can automatically parse that information and store it in a MySQL database to give you averaged results so that the real trouble causers stand out.