I still think it's a server proc load issue. The browser connection doesn't get refused, it just hangs up forever on the response, until the browser finally times out. So it's not like a straight network issue, or Apache just dying completely... just serious sluggishness.

 

I think it behaves more like a thrashing problem (not enough physical RAM) than an overloaded CPU. It goes very suddenly from perfectly responsive to totally gone.

 

I agree with this part of the statement, I don't know what the first part means...

 

Trust me folks, i'm just as frustrated here as anyone. I've opened yet another ticket my our hosting provider. Here is what they have said so far - "there may be a problem with the raid controller. I have also found by checking the apache error logs is that you have hit a maxclients setting and this will cause any other requests to be held until an open connection becomes available."

I will keep you up to date on resolutions.

 

I dont know what that means, but anything with apache and raid can't be good

 

seems like it gos down at 4 oclock on the dot every mornin

 

That's a scheduled server update or something like that. It's different from the lag that's experienced throughout the rest of the day.

 

At 4am EST everyday, we do our mysql database dumps for backup.

Here is the latest from our hosting provider - "have checked the server raid and it appears to once again be functioning normally. I found that the Raid was set to temporary write through to the disk which can indicate a problem with a bbu (battery backup) on this server and cause some performance problems since it is not writing to a cache, which is much faster. I would like to schedule about 15 to 30 minutes of downtime to see if this server has a BBU and that it is operating correctly.

I have also increased the MaxClients setting as requested. Please let me know when you are ready to have us check for the BBU."

I asked them to schedule the downtime as soon as possible to look at the BBU.

I'll keep you up to date when I hear more.

 

Thanks, CeilingMod.

 

Well yeah, that might cause it.



Here's hoping that this clears everything up. Thanks for keeping us in the loop, Chris!

 

That would be great if it clears it up. There was about a ~minute and a half bog just a moment ago, but nothing like the hour outage the other day.

 

I hadn't seen any downtime for several days, and I was starting to wonder if it was all fixed, but then I saw about ten minutes worth around 4:30 PM EST today.