I got an IM from a friend complaining that he couldn’t reach his ozblogistan site. I jumped into an SSH window and discovered that the system load was well north of 50. In non-nerd terms, this translates as “very bad”.
The culprit is PHP. This service is set up with a division of labour between the web server, which handles the front end of things, and copies of the PHP engine which Wordpress Mu relies on. What is supposed to happen is that every X requests, a given copy PHP engine will shut itself down and restart. This is meant to ensure that everything is clean and stable in the long run.
Except that it isn’t working that way at all. PHP unfailingly manages to start up the new copy of itself, but thoughtlessly manages to overlook the killing-of-original-copy part. So after a few days of this the server looked less like an orderly room of cleanliness and more like a petri dish full of angry bacteria on crack.
Right now I have a temporary fix in place whereby each copy of PHP is made to hang around for a great many requests before trying half successfully to die-and-be-reborn. We’ll see if I can solve this little conundrum before things really take off.
One Comment
Yeah I remember that night. Wordpress having appeared to cash in its WTF coupon I retaliated with own “the Admin is in my friends list” card, which came up trumps after much swearing and beating php with alarge blunt object.
Namely Jacques rather large and well rounded head
Got it sorted yet mate?