What is causing high server loads?

[oar4uusa]

What is causing high server loads?

I have server load spikes from time to time that pretty much disable my site. I'd like to be able to track down what is causing these loads, but I'm not that great at server administration. I realize that top can show me what's using processor time, but just telling me the apache process or mysql process does not help me to track down what exactly is behind this. How can I find out what's causing these loads specifically?

[Karl]

If your issues are specifically with Apache and MySQL you can do the following:

Apache - Use mod_status (mod_status - Apache HTTP Server) which will give you a page will all sorts of useful data about Apache usage.

MySQL - Use mytop (mytop - display MySQL server performance info like `top') which is basically top for MySQL.