my server hangs occasionally

[divinelighting]

1.3.9h
Once every few weeks or so my server load spikes and apache stops responding until it is restarted. I had a tech sleuth and he had the following to say:

These processes are hung because of,

/home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/index.php

It doesn't seem to be mySQL which would indicate it's some sort of application issue such as a bad remote connect, a bad loop or something to this extent, we can't tell you why. Possibly going to PHP-FPM might help identify as it will record which lines get slow.

Could it be any of these pulled from the debug log? Or maybe this is consequence of the problem?

[15-Apr-2012 06:51:29] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_index_product_list.php on line 82
[15-Apr-2012 08:03:38] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in Unknown on line 0

[15-Apr-2012 06:50:55] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/includes/autoload_func.php on line 30
[15-Apr-2012 08:02:43] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in Unknown on line 0

[15-Apr-2012 06:49:46] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_index_product_list.php on line 174
[15-Apr-2012 08:01:03] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in Unknown on line 0

[15-Apr-2012 07:09:55] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_modules_product_listing.php on line 37

[15-Apr-2012 07:05:10] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/includes/templates/template_default/templates/tpl_modules_product_listing.php on line 37

[15-Apr-2012 06:53:28] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/includes/modules/require_languages.php on line 28

[15-Apr-2012 06:53:28] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/includes/autoload_func.php on line 48

[15-Apr-2012 06:53:28] PHP Fatal error: Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded in /home/divine/domains/divinelighting.com/public_html/includes/languages/4a/english.php on line 689

[DrByte]

Sounds like your server is suffering from disk drive problems, or overloaded CPU problems. The "Maximum execution time of 30 seconds exceeded" messages you're reporting are all occurring on lines that contain a "require" or "include" function call, which means PHP must request that the server's filesystem read and return the contents of the specified file so that PHP can execute the code contained in the file.
The logical things that would prevent that from happening would be disk problems where the files can't be read, or a CPU that's so overbusy that it can't keep up with the things being asked of it ... and these simple require and include statements are not demanding statements. There's no good reason that any function call to require() or include() would take more than 30 seconds. Should be more like 3 milliseconds ... so clearly the server has some serious problems.

[divinelighting]

Dr. Byte,
Thank you for the help. Zencart is the only resource intensive thing on the server, and this often happens in slow periods for shopping. I have been planning on migrating to a newer server. If it is a disk problem, that should fix it. If not, I will let you know.

Thanks!

[divinelighting]

Dr. Byte,
I've noticed that this issue resolves itself over the period of a few hours (http start responding normally). While this is happening, directadmin and other programs seem to be ok. Unfortunately, it is happening now almost daily. With this info, do you still believe it is a disk drive problem? How do you suggest I proceed?

Thank you,
Dustin

[schoolboy]

Maybe time to find a better host...

[divinelighting]

This is what my provider said:

If the problem goes away when you restart Apache, then it sounds like a configuration/software issue. We can take the server down for hardware testing if you like, but that's generally the extent of the troubleshooting that we do on unmanaged servers (and by your description of the issue, it doesn't sound like it's terribly likely to yield any helpful results). Let us know if you'd like us to take the server down for testing though.

[DrByte]

Well, your host thinks it's a software issue. But I don't see how it would be a Zen Cart issue. So, that leaves the server's own software like the operating system and systems like apache/mysql/php etc.

If you wanna rule out Zen Cart, this is what I do: http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.p...Obscure_Issues

If it's the server's o/s or system software then you're at the mercy of whomever you can retain as a sysadmin to inspect or fix those issues.

[divinelighting]

Updated apache/php. Appears to have fixed the issue.