My box runs out of memory while doing it's daily cron jobs, which causes all instances of apache to be killed.

/etc/cron.daily scripts are: 0anacron, 5snort, calender, exim, find,logrotate,man,modutils,netbase,netkit-inetd, standard and syslogd. Which one of these scripts can be eating the memory at execution, or how can I determine that?

cron.daily scripts should be run at 6.25 according to crontab, but the jobs are excuted at 7.30. What's causing the difference?

I read that most/all linux use a caching mechanism, causing the system always to use about 90% of the available memory. Most of the time, my system uses about 25% (11Mb) of virtual memory. Do I need to worry about that?

So far the questions, I have added some info below. I know my hardware is limited, but I know it is possible to run a small web server on it.

I hope someone can help.

Gilion

System:
i486dx
8Mb RAM
32Mb Swap
341Mb diskspace
Debian stable = 3.0 woody
Linux Kernel 2.4.18

crontab:
SHELL=/bin/sh
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

# m h dom mon dow user command
25 6 * * * root test -e /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.daily
47 6 * * 7 root test -e /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.weekly
52 6 1 * * root test -e /usr/sbin/anacron || run-parts --report /etc/cron.monthly

Syslog's tail:
Oct 31 07:30:01 MIR /USR/SBIN/CRON[14914]: (root) CMD (test -x /etc/init.d/anacron && /etc/init.d/anacron start >/dev/null)
Oct 31 07:30:02 MIR anacron[14917]: Anacron 2.3 started on 2003-10-31
Oct 31 07:30:02 MIR anacron[14917]: Will run job `cron.daily' in 5 min.
Oct 31 07:30:02 MIR anacron[14917]: Jobs will be executed sequentially
Oct 31 07:35:03 MIR anacron[14917]: Job `cron.daily' started
Oct 31 07:35:03 MIR anacron[14921]: Updated timestamp for job `cron.daily' to 2003-10-31
Oct 31 07:38:40 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 14309 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 14309 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 14328 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR last message repeated 2 times
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 14335 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 14336 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 14336 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13213 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13213 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13215 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:36 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13451 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:37 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13451 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13212 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13211 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13211 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13214 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 13214 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR kernel: Out of Memory: Killed process 494 (apache).
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR kernel: VM: killing process apache
Oct 31 07:39:38 MIR dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 131.155.239.140 port 67
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 131.155.239.140 port 67
Oct 31 07:39:39 MIR dhclient: DHCPACK from 131.155.239.140
Oct 31 07:39:41 MIR /USR/SBIN/CRON[15022]: (mail) CMD ( if [ -x /usr/sbin/exim -a -f /etc/exim/exim.conf ]; then /usr/sbin/exim -q ; fi)
Oct 31 07:39:46 MIR dhclient: bound to 131.155.228.107 -- renewal in 747 seconds.

"8Mb RAM"

Maybe you should get some more RAM?

could you try staggering those. take some of that stuff out of cron.daily and give them different times to run so that they dont all run at once.

I've pinned it down to the memory usage of logrotate. Isn't that supposed to be a very basic tool? How can an application like that cause overflows on virtual memory?

Something else I noticed. The rotation of the logs is handled in with syslog script, creating syslog.0 syslog.1 etc. Is that one still necessary after instal of logrotate?

Gilion