Server Load

[in3sting]

Hello,
Today i got this mail from my server:

IMPORTANT: Do not ignore this email.
This is cPanel stats runner on ip90.67-202-73.static.steadfast.net!
While processing the log files for user in3sting, the cpu has been
maxed out for more than a 6 hour period. The current load/uptime line on the server at the time of
this email is
19:51:50 up 5 days, 13:19, 0 users, load average: 1.07, 1.75, 2.06
You should check the server to see why the load is so high and take
steps to lower the load. If you want stats to continue to run even with a high load; Edit
/var/cpanel/cpanel.config and change extracpus to a number larger then 0 (run
/usr/local/cpanel/startup afterwards to pickup the changes).

I ran top in ssh, and here's what i get. What should i do?

top - 04:21:15 up 5 days, 21:48, 1 user, load average: 0.53, 1.02, 1.57
Tasks: 121 total, 3 running, 115 sleeping, 0 stopped, 3 zombie
Cpu(s):100.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni, 0.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st
Mem: 1025716k total, 829136k used, 196580k free, 129364k buffers
Swap: 2096472k total, 19908k used, 2076564k free, 373256k cached

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
3326 root 15 0 31248 28m 2456 S 0.0 2.8 0:01.57 spamd
3349 root 15 0 31248 26m 1248 S 0.0 2.7 0:00.00 spamd
3350 root 15 0 31248 26m 1228 S 0.0 2.7 0:00.00 spamd
5696 mysql 15 0 138m 20m 3964 S 0.0 2.1 782:50.39 mysqld
2862 root 15 0 33292 17m 3068 S 0.0 1.8 2:32.63 yum-updatesd
19644 nobody 15 0 29352 17m 3080 S 0.0 1.8 0:01.43 httpd
19620 nobody 18 0 29336 17m 3020 S 0.0 1.8 0:00.28 httpd
19733 nobody 17 0 28080 16m 3020 R 0.0 1.6 0:00.59 httpd
19021 nobody 15 0 28044 16m 2832 S 0.0 1.6 0:01.75 httpd
10815 root 34 19 20448 15m 2260 S 0.0 1.6 1:04.26 cpanellogd
18848 nobody 15 0 26260 14m 3092 S 0.0 1.5 0:03.37 httpd
19009 nobody 15 0 26228 14m 3084 S 0.0 1.5 0:02.22 httpd
19406 nobody 15 0 26216 14m 3040 S 0.0 1.5 0:02.09 httpd
19608 nobody 15 0 26208 14m 3028 S 0.0 1.5 0:01.17 httpd
19462 nobody 15 0 25960 14m 3076 S 0.0 1.5 0:01.24 httpd
18834 nobody 18 0 26196 14m 2784 S 0.0 1.5 0:02.62 httpd
19417 nobody 18 0 25996 14m 2780 S 0.0 1.4 0:00.84 httpd
19616 nobody 15 0 25752 14m 3040 S 0.0 1.4 0:00.85 httpd
19741 nobody 15 0 25752 14m 3020 S 0.0 1.4 0:00.84 httpd
19494 nobody 20 0 25496 14m 3084 S 0.0 1.4 0:01.64 httpd
19509 nobody 15 0 25204 13m 2784 S 0.0 1.4 0:00.85 httpd

Thanks

[Karl]

You should be able to optimize SpamAssassin or Apache configurations to decrease the load on the CPU. It seems you have some free RAM, so you should have some options there. Play around with KeepAlive in Apache, the various server limits/minimums, etc. and see what works out best for you. If you don't have KeepAlive on in Apache, turning that on and setting it to say 3 seconds could show some vast improvement.

[Kevin]

cPanel is a bit crazy when it comes to this. I would suggest you try tweaking the value of extracups under Tweak Settings in WHM to a higher number to find a balance where running stats does not impact performance but the emails go away.

Otherwise on a fairly busy server, cPanel will refuse to run stats if the load average ever goes above 1.00 which is a fairly ridiculous threshold for any system.

If you do find that you can't get rid of the warning without impacting server performance noticeably you may need to consider upgrading your server.