Re: An actual Linux problem/solution (slicehost)

would it make more sense to limit the number of child processes it can spin
up?  You could run into similar constraints if you hit MaxClients (assuming
apache here?), however, you could monitor for that to trigger your restart
instead.    Is the cause of the load from the web server spinning up a bunch
of processes all of a sudden? Or from the code it is attempting to parse /
deliver?  Increasing the number of servers that are started up could also
help in preventing a spike of load if it is the former.  If the latter is
the issue, perhaps some other optimizations could be made.  I've had some
pretty decent success with memcache in helping reduce mysql traffic and
server load.

> daemonize();
> $count=0;
> while(1){
>  $load=check_load();
>  $date=`date`;
>  if($load > 10.0 and $count == 0){ # seems about right
>    writelog("$date load $load WHOA! force-killing everything.\n");
>    force_kill("httpd","mysqld");
>    sleep(30);
>    restart("httpd","mysqld");
>    $count=2; # seems OK
>    }
>  elsif($load > 3.0 and $count == 0){ # seems about right
>    writelog("$date load $load restarting everything\n");
>    restart("httpd","mysqld");
>    $count=2; # seems about right
>    }
>  sleep(60); # maybe 45?  This works though.
>  if($count > 0){ $count--; }
>  }
> # end