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Three hours ago the server memory usage blowed up to 105% from around 60%.I am using a dedicated MediaTemple server with 512mb RAM.Should I be worried?Why would something like this happen?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Tasks:  38 total,   2 running,  36 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
Cpu(s):  0.0%us,  0.0%sy,  0.0%ni,100.0%id,  0.0%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.0%si,  0.0%st
Mem:    946344k total,   550344k used,   396000k free,        0k buffers
Swap:        0k total,        0k used,        0k free,        0k cached

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
    1 root      15   0 10364  740  620 S  0.0  0.1   0:38.54 init
 3212 root      18   0 96620 4068 3200 R  0.0  0.4   0:00.21 sshd
 3214 root      15   0 12080 1728 1316 S  0.0  0.2   0:00.05 bash
 3267 apache    15   0  412m  43m 4396 S  0.0  4.7   0:03.88 httpd
 3290 apache    15   0  412m  43m 4340 S  0.0  4.7   0:02.98 httpd
 3348 root      15   0  114m  52m 2112 S  0.0  5.6   0:48.94 spamd
 3349 popuser   15   0  114m  50m  972 S  0.0  5.5   0:00.06 spamd
 3455 sw-cp-se  18   0 60116 3216 1408 S  0.0  0.3   0:00.12 sw-cp-serverd
 3525 admin     18   0 81572 4604 2912 S  0.0  0.5   0:01.74 in.proftpd
 3585 apache    18   0  379m  15m 3356 S  0.0  1.7   0:00.01 httpd
 3589 root      15   0 12624 1224  956 R  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 top
 7397 root      15   0 21660  944  712 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.58 xinetd
 9500 named     16   0  301m 5284 1968 S  0.0  0.6   0:00.43 named
 9575 root      15  -4 12632  680  356 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 udevd
 9788 root      25   0 13184  608  472 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 couriertcpd
 9790 root      25   0  3672  380  312 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 courierlogger
 9798 root      25   0 13184  608  472 S  0.0  0.1   0:00.00 couriertcpd
user1217380
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  • Uh, what are we supposed to see in this `top` screenshot? All it shows is ~390M *free* memory... – thkala Jul 24 '12 at 18:05
  • ...although I have to admit that the `0k` for both `buffers` and `cached` are *weird*... – thkala Jul 24 '12 at 18:06
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    MediaTemple's default settings for their (dv) servers are terrible for the average website. Take a look at the [Making It Better](http://wiki.mediatemple.net/w/%28dv%29_4.0_-_Making_It_Better) series (particularly [General Apache Tuning](http://wiki.mediatemple.net/w/%28dv%29_4.0_-_Making_It_Better_::_General_Apache_Tuning)). Note that if you don't turn things off permanently, they can turn back on after an update. – 0b10011 Jul 24 '12 at 20:11
  • @bfrohs: There seems to be something wrong with the links that you posted in your comment... – thkala Jul 24 '12 at 20:47

1 Answers1

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First analyze the process which was taking that much of CPU by the same top command. If the process was a multi-threaded program use the following top command:

top -H -p "pid of that process"

It will help you find the thread whichever is taking a lot of CPU for further diagnosis.

thkala
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