Your server is better than mine in terms of memory. I have a 2.5ghz dual quad harpertown with 4 gigs of ram. Here's what I learned. My server gets 20k visitors per day and over 5million file requests per day.
Install Memcache - brilliant. I was getting crashes the same as you "mysql has gone away" like 100 of these per day but I allocated 1 gig of memory to memcache and the messages have dropped down to like 4-10 per day.
Better HDD - Scsi for faster rpm and I/O wait. Forums that have a ton of visitors usually have high I/O wait. 10k rpm scsi drive works so much better than a normal 7200rpm sata. I ran my forum about two year ago on a Dual Xeon 2.8ghz (old 2003 models) 36gb scsi drive with 2gb ram with about 40-60% of the visitors I have now and it worked out good! But wouldn't be able to handle my website now. Scsi drives are very good. I don't have one now though T_T too expensive with my host.
Like FRDS said, httpd.conf, my.cnf, and php.ini memcache, and apc could be good. If you have 45 bucks to spare try www.litespeedtech.com I here it works very very very well. Free 15 day trail with 2 cores running.
But first I would try to increase the memory amount that you allocate to memcache if you have this installed. Since you have 8 gigs of ram, 2gigs to memcache should be good I think.
09-15-2008, 06:37 AM
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