Server Load

I noticed that the mario server has a constant high CPU load, it's around 50 right now, and it was 250 or more yesterday!!!

This is making the server pretty much unusable.

I'm wondering if this is normal at dreamhost, and something to arrange with ("you get what you pay for"), or if this is rather an expception. Is Dreamhost just overselling like crazy?!

For those not familiar with it: you can check your server load by logging in to your account by SSH and enter the 'top' command (see "load average").

Everything above 2-3 is already too high IMO.

Edited by floid on 01/27/08 06:18 AM (server time).

Sounds like someone's going crazy on your server. What's the CPU's percentage?

Note down the servertime (maybe even take an ALT+PRNTSCRN screenshot) and buzz Support.

"Cpu(s): 62.7% user, 27.7% system"

I already did contact support, no reply since more than 24 hours.

Load is at 70 now...

Just a nitpick, "load" is not CPU load. It's the load average of the machine, i.e. the average number of processes in runnable or uninterruptible sleep state -- the latter is the kicker, since that means anything waiting on storage is counted as one of those processes. If one of your filers is busy, this can rise up a lot while the CPU remains, essentially idle (and processes accessing files on other filers are really not affected at all).

That having been said, 50 and 250 is not the norm. Support SHOULD help you. I rarely see a load of < 3-4, but rarely above 10 on my DH machine.

In reply to:

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I already did contact support, no reply since more than 24 hours.

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That may be a good sign. One bad thing about support is that oftentimes, if there is a problem they're not too good about telling you that there is a problem and they are working on it, they'll just start working on it.

If it takes them a while to finish, this means you can't tell whether they're working on the problem or if they're ignoring you. Well, except for the fact that they're pretty much never ignoring you - you'll get a "there doesn't seem to be a problem now" response if that's happening! :)

Check on your server load periodically. If it happens periodically rather than consistently, it'll take support a while to figure it out. If it happens consistently, though that's bad for you it means it'll be pretty obvious to the support team what the problem is. If it's a periodic problem, I usually try to find a pattern that I can send them to help identify the culprit. This also helps to make sure that I'm not the culprit!

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[mario]$ users