vBulletin hogging memory! Help!

Hi All!

My vB setup isn't too complicated, but I have a handful of plugins turned on that might be causing my problems.

Firstly, my problem is I'm with a VPS that only gives me 256MB guaranteed RAM with 1GB burst. Should this be enough for a forum with about 100 people browsing at most times? My forum seems to be eclipsing or getting up to my full memory allocation all of the time (probably due to sleeping mySQL processes) and the SLM memory management tool keeps on resorting to killing vital services such as httpd, named and pop etc....

The Host is no help, as they just say I need to reduce the amount of mySQL processes running and it will in turn reduce the memory load.

Is there any way of telling which of the plugin scripts (if any?) are giving me grief?

I'm on 3.6.4 and have the following plugins (all are currently disabled):-

Admin Log In As User 2.0
Auto Database Backup 2.12
Disable Hard Deletions 1.1
iTrader 2.0.1
Last Seen Online (Postbit) (Brad) 1.5
Members who have visited the forum 4.36
Miserable Users 2.12
Multiple Login Detector 1.03
NoSpam! 2.0
ZH - Report PM 1.0.1


Any help would be greatly appreciated, as my server is going down about once every few hours...

[Paul M]

You really need to check your mysql settings, each process may be using more memory than it needs - you don't exactly have much to play with.

[MrToasty]

Hmmm... It says I have 50 sleeping processes in top... bad?

02:21:43 up 1:51, 1 user, load average: 0.11, 0.08, 0.07
51 processes: 50 sleeping, 1 running, 0 zombie, 0 stopped
CPU0 states: 0.0% user 0.0% system 0.0% nice 0.2% iowait 99.3% idle
CPU1 states: 3.3% user 0.2% system 0.0% nice 0.3% iowait 95.2% idle
Mem: 1048576k av, 195992k used, 852584k free, 0k shrd, 0k buff
0k active, 0k inactive
Swap: 0k av, 0k used, 0k free 0k cached

PID USER PRI NI SIZE RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME CPU COMMAND
1 root 16 0 1308 484 432 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 init [3]
6113 root 16 0 1368 500 424 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 syslogd -m 0
6127 named 20 0 15172 3512 1848 S 0.0 0.3 0:00 1 /usr/sbin/named -u nam
6141 root 16 0 3460 1020 780 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 1 /usr/sbin/sshd
7176 root 16 0 1976 804 656 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 xinetd -stayalive -pid
7221 root 16 0 9700 8048 1076 S 0.0 0.7 0:00 1 chkservd
7294 mailnull 16 0 6660 1088 760 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 /usr/sbin/exim -bd -q6
7300 mailnull 18 0 6624 1040 724 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 1 /usr/sbin/exim -tls-on
7312 root 16 0 2736 888 616 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 antirelayd
7409 root 16 0 9744 5136 2860 S 0.0 0.4 0:00 1 /usr/local/apache/bin/
7418 root 16 0 1356 544 476 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 crond
7452 root 19 0 2056 1064 896 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 /bin/sh /usr/bin/mysql
7543 mysql 15 0 114M 34M 2288 S 0.0 3.3 0:00 0 /usr/sbin/mysqld --bas
7612 root 34 19 12192 10M 1488 S N 0.0 0.9 0:00 0 cpanellogd - sleeping
7669 root 16 0 17216 8412 1060 S 0.0 0.8 0:00 1 cpsrvd - waiting for c
7683 cpanel 17 0 3772 936 672 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 1 /usr/sbin/stunnel /usr
7759 root 18 0 1328 376 308 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 0 /usr/sbin/portsentry -
17825 root 16 0 6736 1976 1440 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 sshd: root@pts/0
17845 root 15 0 2168 1268 984 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 1 -bash
17953 root 17 0 1908 1072 752 R 0.0 0.1 0:00 1 top
30335 root 16 0 10644 5684 960 S 0.0 0.5 0:00 0 cppop - accepting on p
5447 root 16 0 5708 1316 1040 S 0.0 0.1 0:00 0 pure-ftpd (SERVER)
5450 root 18 0 3344 872 696 S 0.0 0.0 0:00 1 /usr/sbin/pure-authd -

[Zia]

mmm..im not that expert...
but shareing my. exp..

we are also on vps 256MB garanteed ram + 1024 burst ram..
while 100+ user on my site at a time..
server load doesnt cross 1.00

current stats :64 user atm
[Server Loads: 0.34 0.76 : 0.54]

we ar using fcgi mod/mod_gzip/full tex search/lifespan time 90/eAcclerator 32Mb
there are many way to reduce server load for vb

do a search google
reduce server load on vb or what ever u like...surely u will find many way

now are thinking to install memcache for sql...