My server is running very slow, and I cannot figure out why? The server has been running fine for a few months, and now it is running really slow, to a point I am getting time-outs by requesting a simple web page from Apache, and I am the only person connected to the website.

Here is what I know about the server.

Server:
Dell 2.4GHz, 128MB ram, SCSI 10,000 rmp drive

Platform:
Mandrake 9.1 - Gnome desktop.

Main applications:
Apache, MySQL

When I run "top" here is the output:
top - 09:28:42 up 10:44, 1 user, load average: 0.07, 0.02, 0.00
Tasks: 100 total, 1 running, 99 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
Cpu(s): 0.7% user, 0.7% system, 0.0% nice, 98.7% idle
Mem: 126360k total, 101764k used, 24596k free, 7424k buffers
Swap: 506008k total, 25724k used, 480284k free, 39124k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ Command
1070 daemon 10 0 612 608 500 S 0.3 0.5 0:00.03 tmdns
1746 root 18 0 4320 1516 1224 S 0.3 1.2 0:00.06 miniserv.pl
8015 root 15 0 996 996 776 R 0.3 0.8 0:00.16 top
8031 root 11 0 5464 3424 2640 S 0.3 2.7 0:00.01 miniserv.pl
1 root 8 0 144 128 96 S 0.0 0.1 0:04.23 init
2 root 9 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.03 keventd


What else can I do to check out the server?

Thanks, in advance.

With a whopping 1.4% system usage, I'm wondering if it's process related at all. Have you checked your network connection? Maybe it's completely in the bandwidth -- "That's when I realized that it's not in the box, it's in the band." ;-)

From that info I can't see anything that would
explain why it's slow...

Two things, though:
1. if it's a web-server, why bother it with Gnome
and/or X at all? Just eats valuable RAM... and as
you're running webmin anyway, you probably don't
need "other graphical conifguration gimmicks".
2. why are you running two instances of webmin?


Cheers,
TInk

I don't know why there are two instances of webmin, good question. I am assuming that since my system is sooo sloooow, I got a timeout with one of the webmin sessions and the system started a new instance?? But thats just a stab in the dark. Buy the way, webmin is very sloooow as well, so the problem points to a bandwidth issue.

How would I check if the bandwidth is the issue? I have a 3COM switch, but it does not show the bandwidth usage.


As a side note: I am thinking of rebuilding the server, this time use my second old box for development, and the server would have a minimal install. But that is down the road, got to get this one going first.

If you want to keep the X server and all the GUIs, you will need more RAM.
A minimum of 256 MB is required, but I suggest 512 MB -- if you plan on adding more users or running active web sites.