5 ms·

It wasn't just hacker news. I disabled caching when messing with the style sheet and forgot to re-enable it. Wordpress sans caching was eating the low-end slice

by lbrandy 18y ago

It wasn't just hacker news. I disabled caching when messing with the style sheet and forgot to re-enable it. Wordpress sans caching was eating the low-end slice I had from slicehost. It should be fine, now. PS. the slicehost guys were a big help, worth every penny.

davidw 18y ago
I'm considering using slicehost. What do you mean 'killed'? What happened? How'd you learn about it? How are they helpful? I'm quite curious as to what the parallels are to a 'real' physical server, like the one I have now.
- lbrandy 18y ago
  I noticed my server was sluggish. I ssh'd into it just in time to see some out of memory errors and notice my top was loaded with apache children. My ssh terminal became unresponsive. I went to the slicehost chatroom and said "uh oh" and they told me to use their local web-based console. It got me to the machine just in time to see an endless loop of 'out of memory' spam. They told me I was swapping like crazy and having memory problems. They asked me about my mysql/apache config. As per their suggestion, I rebooting the machine to try to get into apache and lower the number of children, and the machine crashed after reboot before I could do anything, with more out of memory spam. They suggested the best next step was to do an upgrade on the slice from 256 to 512, which I did. It took about 10 minutes. It's prorated, so I only pay the higher price for the amount of time I'm at 512. Once I upgraded, the machine was stable enough for me to re-enable caching. Now that the crisis was averted, all the extra apache threads died off, and my machine went back to normal. They gave me a bunch of links showing how to more properly configure apache/mysql for low-ram VPSs.
  - cookiecaper 18y ago
    It's down again now. Just make this point to a static page?
  - alex_c 18y ago
    Can you share those links?
    - lbrandy 18y ago
      http://forum.slicehost.com/?CategoryID=7 http://forum.slicehost.com/?CategoryID=7 ...especially.. http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=853&page=1#Item_0 http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=853&#38... Here's another I dug up: http://chrisjohnston.org/2008/configuring-a-lightweight-apache-mysql-install-on-debian-ubuntu http://chrisjohnston.org/2008/configuring-a-lightweight-apac...
- mrtron 18y ago
  Slicehost is just like your real server now, but imagine your real server running Wordpress like this guy without caching...on 256 megs of RAM (the cheapest package). I run a lot of stuff off a single 256 slice myself, and have had zero problems.
- axod 18y ago
  Slicehost are awesome. They know their stuff, and they actually care. I've had a few dedicated servers from big companies, with absolutely no support provided by people with no clue whatsoever. Slicehost has been fantastic. Most notably dealing with a couple of DOS attacks against my slice.

by lbrandy 18y ago

davidw 18y ago

I'm considering using slicehost. What do you mean 'killed'? What happened? How'd you learn about it? How are they helpful? I'm quite curious as to what the parallels are to a 'real' physical server, like the one I have now.

lbrandy 18y ago
I noticed my server was sluggish. I ssh'd into it just in time to see some out of memory errors and notice my top was loaded with apache children. My ssh terminal became unresponsive. I went to the slicehost chatroom and said "uh oh" and they told me to use their local web-based console. It got me to the machine just in time to see an endless loop of 'out of memory' spam. They told me I was swapping like crazy and having memory problems. They asked me about my mysql/apache config. As per their suggestion, I rebooting the machine to try to get into apache and lower the number of children, and the machine crashed after reboot before I could do anything, with more out of memory spam. They suggested the best next step was to do an upgrade on the slice from 256 to 512, which I did. It took about 10 minutes. It's prorated, so I only pay the higher price for the amount of time I'm at 512. Once I upgraded, the machine was stable enough for me to re-enable caching. Now that the crisis was averted, all the extra apache threads died off, and my machine went back to normal. They gave me a bunch of links showing how to more properly configure apache/mysql for low-ram VPSs.
- cookiecaper 18y ago
  It's down again now. Just make this point to a static page?
- alex_c 18y ago
  Can you share those links?
  - lbrandy 18y ago
    http://forum.slicehost.com/?CategoryID=7 http://forum.slicehost.com/?CategoryID=7 ...especially.. http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=853&page=1#Item_0 http://forum.slicehost.com/comments.php?DiscussionID=853&#38... Here's another I dug up: http://chrisjohnston.org/2008/configuring-a-lightweight-apache-mysql-install-on-debian-ubuntu http://chrisjohnston.org/2008/configuring-a-lightweight-apac...
mrtron 18y ago
Slicehost is just like your real server now, but imagine your real server running Wordpress like this guy without caching...on 256 megs of RAM (the cheapest package). I run a lot of stuff off a single 256 slice myself, and have had zero problems.
axod 18y ago
Slicehost are awesome. They know their stuff, and they actually care. I've had a few dedicated servers from big companies, with absolutely no support provided by people with no clue whatsoever. Slicehost has been fantastic. Most notably dealing with a couple of DOS attacks against my slice.