High CPU useage when board is set to active

[patracy]

A little background about a month ago (35 days) we saw this behavior. Tried cycling apache, that only helped for a moment or two. Ended up simply rebooting the server and things seemed to be fine after that. The past few days I had noticed high useage. Until yesterday when things slowed to a crawl. To the point that it took several times to even SSH into the server. Utilization in the 200's. Stopped httpd, things behave. Turned it back on, cpu utilization rockets. So I started to try to pick apart all the "bolt ons" to the forum. Disabled the openx ads, a few things on the sidebars. Problem repeated. I haven't added any plugins in quite some time, so I disabled all of them. Problem is still there with the forum active. Now, flip the forum to off (mods/admins can view only), and it's fine. It's been fine all night like that.

There's a few things that need to be updated. I did go ahead and update httpd. But that seems to have no effect. There's still mysql and php that need updates. (I know vB needs those at least from the list) I guess I'll update them.

Just at a loss what the cause is, and why it "resolved" itself last month from a reboot.

System info:
Centos 6.5 on VM
2 CPU 3ghz
8gb ram, 6.5gb in use currently in "offline" mode.
MySql 5.1.73
PHP 5.3.3
Apache/2.2.15
vB 4.2.1 PL1 with a few of the CP patched files from 4.2.3
Running zbblock as well.

[Dave]

How many plugins are you using?
What if you disable each plugin one by one until it starts working fine again? Then you can find the one that's causing this.

[patracy]

17 plug-ins that would be active, but I have the plugin system turned off in the admincp.(admincp>Settings>Options>Plugin/hook system>No)


Plug-ins loaded. * Means no longer used. # means used but has been disabled since the last outage.

vBulletin 4.2.1
*123 Flash Chat 3.0.0
Add View Forum Threads to Memberaction Dropdown 1.3
Asset Manager Multiple File Upload Fix 1.1.0
Auto Database Backup 4.2.0.2
Auto Youtube-Link Parser 1.4
Auto-Orient Images 0.9
*CES VaultWiki 2.1.2
Change Posts Owner 1.9.0
#CometChat Plugin 1.0
*DownloadsII Create Thread 1.0.2
Duplicate IP Report by BOP5 2.1.2
EveryWhere Sidebar 1.5.3
GlowHost - Spam-O-Matic 2.0.2
LAM - Paid Subscription Expiry Notice 4.0.8.0
Miserable Users 4.2.0.0
Multiple Login Detector 1.03 Cookie-based multiple account login detector
New reCaptcha for Human Verification 0.9 [kh99] New reCaptcha for Human Verification
Post Thank You Hack 7.84
*PostRelease 4.2.1
Separate Sticky and Normal Threads 2.0.0
Tapatalk 5.5.11
vbresults.com - Bot Blocker 1.0 1.3
*vBulletin Blog 4.2.1
vBulletin CMS 4.2.1

Just remembered a few other things to list in the config.

--------------- Added [DATE]1453227140[/DATE] at [TIME]1453227140[/TIME] ---------------

So I did some more testing. Disabled zbblock for a moment to see if I could bring the forum up. No change. So before going any further I decided to take a backup of the database. Even with the forum off, apache spiked again. I've noted 125-200+ processes running. A vast majority of them are Apache when they scroll through top. So I watched the utilization not touching the database or apache. I gziped the backup, which of course used up a chunk of CPU. The interesting thing is, while gzip would spike a CPU to 100% at times. Overall utilization only got up to 2.05 at most during this action. While I was taking the backup and the forum set to off, utilization soared to 150+. Kinda wondering now since disabling hooks and plug ins, as well as zbblock have had no effect. Perhaps there's something going on with apache/php/mysql?

[BrettC Frontier]

If you have SSH/terminal access to the server (assuming you do by the above post), when the server begin to have severe issues, type in this to the terminal:

ps auxf | sort -rk 3,3 | head -n 10

Have you checked any access or error logs to your web server's vhost for the domain by chance? Have you checked for any long-running SQL queries? Are your forums apache processes running on the same as your SQL server?

[setishock]

Spam O matic is server intensive. It was jacking my server around so bad I had to uninstall it.
You may want to check on bot blocker also. I don't use that but worth taking a look. Chat add ons will bang the hell out of a server. Too much going on that's server intensive.

Another thing is to ask yourself is, do I really need that many plug ins? Some of that you have, combined, can be loading up the server.

[Zachery]

Man, why are you running an insanely weird set of insanely outdated php/MySQL/apache.

Upgrade apache to a minimum of 2.2.31 but preferably 2.4.18, though that is a major upgrade so use caution (the 2.4.x branch)

Upgrade MySQL to latest 5.5 or 5.6 branch. IIRC there are some weird issues with MySQL 5.7 and vB4, not sure if they've been patched yet. Pro Tip: backup all of your databases prior to upgrading.

Upgrade PHP to a minimum of PHP 5.5.31, though 5.6 would be way better. 5.3.3 is a notoriously buggy and bad build of PHP.

Unless you can't for some reason you should upgrade to the least vBulletin 4.2.x build as well, there isn't a great reason not to.

After you do all that, I would really consider checking in with George on vBulletin.com assuming he is still posting server config help.

As one last recommendation, if you're sending a tiny amount of emails per month (less than 10k) and you're not taking advantage of mail services on your server, you could free up a lot of ram and system resources. https://sendgrid.com/pricing SendGrid Free or Lite area both stupid cheap. MailChimp also has a cheap plan: http://mailchimp.com/pricing/entrepreneur/ lastly Amazon has SES with 60k messages In its free tier, but there may be other requirements: https://aws.amazon.com/ses/

Really it'd be a lot better to outsource your email anyway. If you need your own email GoogleApps / Office 365 business might make a lot more sense (esp for 1-2 accounts).

[RichieBoy67]

From quick glance the mods you should try disabling are the auto back up and the ip reports. The back up though is probably doing it. I have used Glowhost for years and have never had any issues with cpu usage.

Definitely update!