[cobalt-users] RAQ4 slowing down with high processor load.

["Neil James" <ned@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi

we have a RAQ4 128MB which in the last few weeks has been giving problems. 
It's a standard machine except we have webalizer installed. Nothing new has 
been installed or patched recently.  The box has been running fine for almost 3 
years.

It only has about 10 active sites which get 300-400 visitors a day at most 
although we did have one quite busy site (>6000 visitors per day) which I moved 
to a server of it's own about a week ago.

We've started getting daily error messages (timed > 0400) that it was very low 
on memory. Sometimes we'd get 'postgresql server is not responding'. 
Eventually we would get a message that the processor load was very high. 

Going to the control panel would bring up the left frame but 'internal server error' 
messages for the main and status frames. Rebooting it cleared it but after a 
while I did notice that we were not getting access stats since the problem 
started.

We also had error messages like this:

errors occured while rotating /var/log/httpd/access

Out of memory!
Callback called exit at /usr/local/sbin/split_logs line 7.
END failed--cleanup aborted at /usr/local/sbin/split_logs line 48.
Callback called exit at /usr/local/sbin/split_logs line 48.
END failed--cleanup aborted at /usr/local/sbin/split_logs line 31.
Callback called exit at /usr/local/sbin/split_logs line 31.
END failed--cleanup aborted at /usr/local/sbin/split_logs line 58.
Callback called exit at /usr/local/sbin/split_logs line 58.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at /usr/local/sbin/split_logs line 7.
error running prerotate script -- leaving old log in place

The host company tech support suggested running a daily script to rm 
web.cache files from all sites, which didn't help. I tried deleting access logs too 
but no change.

Running top showed a process called parseReport.pl using  (typically) 168M of 
memory that had been running for 13 hours! I'm not sure what this process is but 
think it might be associated with webalizer. 

Can anyone tell me if this process is webalizer and if so what is causing it to 
choke? Is it a build up of log sizes somewhere? 

If so how do I reduce the size? Even more important how do I find them?

My expertise is limited to running the Cobalt control panel so any pointers would 
be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Neil