slow apache
 

hi folks - I'm new here and quite new to linux so have patience with me ;o)

I have a virtual root server with redhat - I installed some stuff on it like an irc bouncer, teamspeak hlstats (half life stats - a perl script) ... on the system I have apache running for some pages - at least one of them is quite big and visited frequently (but still only a clanpage - generates about 5 gig traffic per month).

now the problem is that everything is working well except apache, the response times are absolutely ok with ftp and ssh, direct file downloads, the perl script is running fast enough as well - just the page loads take ages. actually often they don't respond at all for some seconds, then they are sent at once.

now I would need some tool to find out if apache is the slow part in this or if the (shared) cpu is the bottle neck. are there any benchmarks for this? or at least a system monitor? "top" isn't giving me enough information but as it is a virtual root maybe nothing can? I can only use ssh so no graphical tools possible

I am sharing this server with probably a lot of people which results in a very unstable connection that is sure but I don't get why the webserver is always slow no matter at what time of the day, maybe it's only a configuration problem as I'm using the preinstalled configuration of my server host, so optimization hints would be good ...


thanks for any advice!

maybe I could try to set a higher priority for the apache processes?