My VPS keeps crashing

#1

So I ever since the move to the new hardware I am having a real problem with my site. Basically the crashes and then doesn’t automatically reboot. If I reboot the server its up for a minute and then crashes again. I have done every thing possible to optimize the site (cloudflare, Super cache, dp cache, widget cashe). I have also maxed out the ram to 4 gigs. No matter what I do memory, and cpu usages slowly increases until the sites crash and don’t come back. The cpu and ram increase seem completely independed of the site traffic with them steadily growing over the night when the usages is at the lowest.

I have sent in a support ticket but I didn’t even get the normal automated response that the ticket had been received. Anyone know what is going on. Is this just my VPS or are other people having this problem?

#2

Small things to do:

https://panel.dreamhost.com/index.cgi?tree=vserver.settings& - Turn off Jabber and FTP. You can still use SSH and SFTP.

Change your domains from PHP 5.2 to 5.3. I looked at a couple and they’re all on 5.2. This will give you a little more memory.

Turn on pagespeed where you can. Not all apps work well with it, so test it out.

#3

I have taken the actions you suggested and the server is up and running for now. But doesn’t this seem not right to you. How can I go from running fine on 1 Gig RAM and less that .5 cpu load to needing 4 gigs of ram with over 2.0 CPU load just to stay alive 50% of the time when nothing has changed in my configuration or site usage. How can that be?

#4

Please can someone help. The server is still crashing every 6 hours and not coming back online. Everything has been optimized and maxed out as much as I can. I have gotten no reply from support not even of the automated type indicating that it’s in the queue. It has been almost 5 days with my server not being able to stay online for any a full day of operations.

There is something very very wrong going on here. My sites were working fine until the move and now boom! I just need some help figuring this out because I have tried everything I know. Please I just need some help.

#5

How many domains are you serving, what are the applications you’re using on them, and how many hits total are they receiving concurrently?

Got links?

#6

http://www.legacycomic.com/


http://www.bladebunny.com
http:///www.escarchive.com
http://www.physicsofsailing.com

http://www.todreamofdragons.com

#7

BladeBunny’s getting a lot of traffic from what I can see. Have you noticed an uptick in visitors to your sites?

#8

No the visitors are exactly the same based on Google analytic and wordpress’ jetpack statistics. When I try to retrieve the Dreamhost’s stats I am redirected to a page not found so I can’t talk on that.

You think something is nefarious is going on with that site?

#9

legacycomic and bladebunny are the only sites that would respond when I tried just now - and legacy took far longer than I would normally wait until hitting the Back button. And even then not all the content loaded anyway. It “feels” like Apache isn’t coping too well. Did you get slash-dotted or something?

#10

I am not experience any unusual traffic. This is what I am seeing on the server. A slow growth of RAM consumption until the server crashes and doesn’t reboot.

#11

That screenie looks okay to me (assuming your traffic is usually on the high side).

Do you have a cronjob rebooting the server every 12 hours or something?

#12

Hello,

I see you spoke to our livechat team and they advised you to submit a ticket so that we can further investigate the cause of this. We’ve received the ticket & will be investigating it soon. I sincerely apologize for the slowness/timeouts. Thank you so much for your patience. I’ll keep an eye on your ticket to make sure it gets answered.

Regards,
Justin H
DreamHost Staff