I posted this on vbulletin.com in the server optimization thread and they gave me some suggestion. But it doesn't seem to add up to me. I am running a forum on a dedicated box -4 2.8ghz, 2 gig of ram. Everything has been fine and then this week we have seen high cpu utilization. As a result at one point the server load which was always .2 went to 54.32. OUCH. If I reboot it helps. vb says to upgrade apache, install an acclerator, upgrade php and mysql and gave some config tweaks. I am going to do all that this week I am sure it will help. But there has to be some other issue imo. With no additional load on the server, why would this start all of a sudden? I found these perl scripts running. Unfortunately I don't know what they are doing. 15947 apache 129 0 4852K 4164K RUN 235:54 23.54% 23.54% perl5.8.6 16090 apache 129 0 4852K 4164K RUN 234:51 23.49% 23.49% perl5.8.6 16112 apache 129 0 4852K 4168K RUN 235:07 23.39% 23.39% perl5.8.6 12160 apache 129 0 4852K 4168K RUN 383:27 23.19% 23.19% perl5.8.6 Can anyone tell me how to check? Or point me to a good resource? I appreciate the feedback. I had lost the bookmark for this forum, you guys had helped me once before. Just reading through here now -- this is the place that I need to be to learn. Thanks!
Yeah vb says they don't use perl, the webhost configured plesk and they are not clear on whether or not that uses perl. I tried upgrading plesk just to be sure but it requires an OS reload. I was thinking that it could have been a DOS attack, not sure though. Regardless the server loads are still running high. 10.24 a day after a reboot. Normally would be .24.
You need a relationship with a systems administrator. I run a big site with a VB forum and I couldn't go a week without him. All the time stuff like what you described happens and in 10 minutes he figures out what the problem was. The VB staff knows almost nothing.