[ic] HELP performance problem on live system

[interchange-users@interchange.redhat.com (Peter Jakl)]

>> >I have interchange running in "high traffic" mode that is choking.
It is
>> >using mysql.
>> 
>> Administer CPR immediately.  Or did you have another definition of 
>> "choking"?  :-)
>> 
>> >I'm running on a 512mb system with a single processor Pentium iii
>> >800mhz. The system is taking about 25 orders per hour and their
appears
>> >to be about 20 to 30 simultaneous connections at any one time. load
>> >average on the Linux system is around 8.00.
>> >
>> >Should I up the maxservers on interchange (currently 10)?
>> >
>> >Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
>> >
>> >Peter
>> 
>> For hardware, 512mb is like $140 these days and a U160 hdd isn't much

>> more.  For software, you can try more maxservers if you're not maxing
out 
>> your RAM already (don't count too much for hdd caching).  Also try
rpc 
>> mode.  You can index your database really well, too, and don't forget
to 
>> regularly expire your sessions.  You can optimize your apache (lots
of >>docs 
>> on that).  There is also a lot to do for optimizing the OS (new
kernel, 
>> disable "last accessed" on file systems, etc.), but focusing more on
IC >>is 
>> probably a better use of your time.  Good luck,

>That sounds to me like plenty of hardware for 25 orders an hour.
>Something must be very "unoptimized".  Or you have an overly complex
>catalog (work on caching).  20-30 connections is not a lot.
>
>Start by looking at the logs.  Database, web server, ic.
>
>And top, swap, ps ax.
>
>What does load avg go down to when you kill IC?  Is this
>really IC or something else?   Procmail and spamkiller
>repeatedly bouncing a 120Mb log file comes to mind....
>A load avg that high might also mean the effects are 
>snowballing.
>
>Memory is cheap, yes, that would help.  You are not using some
>old slow IDE hard drive are you?  That could ball you up bad.
>man hdparm.
>
>If your machine is that busy, it's unlikely you can afford
>to toubleshoot it hot.  Bring up another machine first.
>

Thanks for the input. I have a SCSI subsystem. Killing IC brings it down
to virtually idle. There is nothing else impacting performance that I
can see. I am using ps, top, etc.

I don't like to throw hardware unless I see that it is definitely
thrashing. It seems it should not be crawling this badly.

Each instance of interchange is using 14mb+ of memory which seems
excessive but then again it is perl and I expect it to be a memory hog.

Peter