CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Dan O'Reilly -
Number of replies: 11

Hi,

I am running a Moodle 2.3.2 on NoSupportLinuxHosting.  The configuration for the host server is supposed to be:

  • 8 CPU Cores
  • 16GB RAM
  • RAID 10 Storage (20 drives + multiple SSD drives for block level caching)
  • CloudLinux 6.3 Linux (64 bit)
  • cPanel 11.34
  • Apache 2.2.23
  • MySQL 5.5.27
  • PHP 5.3.19

I have been using this site for over a year, starting with Moodle 2.0.  I have no students and this is not a production site. I use it to test out various course and quiz setups for Moodle clients that I have.  Until the end of November I had no problem with the site.  It has worked well until the end of November this year.   In early November I installed Moodle 2.3.3+ (I have been upgrading my Moodles to the most recent version).  However, since about Nov 26th the response to a click to my site is taking about 3.5 minutes.  I reinstalled my previous version of Moodle 2.3.2 from the cPanel backups to see if it was an issue with 2.3.3+.  There was no improvement in performance.  When I viewed the CPU usage I was hitting 100% everytime I clicked a link on my site.  I contacted NoSupportLinuxHosting and they claimed that I was using too much CPU and, consequently, they throttled me down.   I just disabled one of the plugins that I am not using (there are 246 active plugins) and it took me more than 10 minutes because of the response of my site to do that.   At this rate it will take up to 2460 minutes (40 hours) to disable the plugins to see which plugins are using the resources.  I have two questions to this forum:  Is this Host reasonable, or should I simply find another Host?  Are there plugins for 2.3 that use a lot of resources and they should not be enabled unless absolutely necessary?  (I have basically accepted the default plugins)

Thanks for your time,

Dan

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In reply to Dan O'Reilly

Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Simon Story -

Can you ssh into the machine?

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In reply to Simon Story

Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Dan O'Reilly -

I never setup SSH; however, I have no problem accessing my files via cPannel.  In fact, I have some HTML pages setup for another project I was working on and they deliver with no delay.  Looks like the Host provider has throttled down the Moodle install only.

Dan

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Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Visvanath Ratnaweera -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Translators
Hi Dan

You ask:
> Is this Host reasonable, ...

Are you kidding?

> Are there plugins for 2.3 that use a lot of resources and they should not be enabled unless absolutely necessary? (I have basically accepted the default plugins)

Sure plugins can cause havoc. But there are no such plugins in the 2.3 core installation to my knowledge.
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In reply to Dan O'Reilly

Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

I did not know about NoSupportLinuxHosting, so I visited their website and saw that it's a very low cost ($1 per month) environment.  When you say "16BG RAM", I doubt that they allocate much of this to your own site.  One never knows, but I doubt that for $1 per month that you get much of anything, which is why a single click in Moodle is hitting 100%.

My thoughts are that you should probably consider another Hosting company.  At least you have gained some experience with the low cost approach.

By the way, look for a company (i.e., make sure to ask them) that supports SSH.  Eventually, you will want this feature.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Dan O'Reilly -

Hi Rick,

I have come to that conclusion, i.e., I gained experience with Moodle, PHP, and MySQL on a hosting service for very little money.  One of the reasons that I posted here is because I told the company that if I did not get an improvement in service that I would go to another hosting company.  That was when I was told that no hosting company would allow me to run my install as it is.  Again, it is just a basic install with no imported plugins, and I wanted to determine whether others are disabling plugins to run on a shared hosted service, before I tried to set up with another service.

Thanks for your comments,

Dan

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In reply to Dan O'Reilly

Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Michael Penney -

 That was when I was told that no hosting company would allow me to runmy install as it is.

Classic FUD (fear, uncertainty, despair) that a company uses to claim that no one provides better than their own poor service.

That said, few cheap hosting providers are tuned for Moodle, due to Moodle being a applcation that does many database writes (as students submit work, take quizzes, and the logs update as they navigate around).  Even most 'Web 2.0' applications have only a few users doing databasewrites, wheras for Moodle, most users are writing to the database. Not a Moodle 'fault' - its inherant in the type of application Moodle is.

This is a reason Moodle Partners are often both more expensive and a better choice as they tend to be moderately to highly tuned for running Moodle (if they aren't, running multiple Moodle sites will soon overload their systemswink).  

If not a Moodle Partner, look for a hosting provider that runs and is tuned for similar highly social/high database write type apps. One I've used with success is Joyent, they run Linkedin, for example, another kind of web app with lots of db writessmile.

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Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

I have been experimenting with TDMHosting.com.  The claim to know Moodle, and even on their "hosted account", I was able to get them to install a newer version of php and mySQL so that I could run Moodle 2.3 (at that time).  Well, I have Moodle 2.4 is running on their hosted server, here is my site:  www.rjerz2.com/moodle24.

I made this video to show you its performance.  This is only an experimental site, so I really don't know how it would perform as more and more courses and students are loaded.  But the good news it that it costs only (around) $5/month.  I actually use it to serve all of my videos.

I don't sell anything for TMDHosting, but they said that I could be an "affiliate", and if anyone used my lastname when signing up, they could get a small discount and I would get a small kickback (maybe to pay for some of my experimenting, oh well).  I haven't really tested this, but it is worth a try.

By the way, TMDHosting provides support only through its ticketing system.  I can't really phone them.  However, they have been excellent with support in their ticketing system.

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Dan O'Reilly -

My system on NoSupportLinusHosting was running reasonably well, like I said, until the end of November.  It would bog down at times, but pick up not too long after.  And for what I was doing it didn't bother me.  So, it worked well for little more than a year.  And, I was doing things similar to what you seem to be doing from your video.  Anyway, I am getting no where with NoSupportLinuxHosting so I will definitely explore TDMHosting.  If I sign up I will use your lastname.

Thnx, Dan

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In reply to Dan O'Reilly

Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Rick Jerz -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Testers

It seems that sometimes, these hosting companies do not want to believe that something really happened on their end.  They tend to first blame it on you.  You might make sure that they do everything they can, like rebooted the physical server, or moving your hosted account to another machine.  I have had to do this with GoDaddy at times in the past (but not recently).

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In reply to Rick Jerz

Re: CPU usage 100% on NoSupportLinuxHosting

by Ken Task -
Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers

Added to that ... it appears some hosting providers who have install scripts also assume community here in Moodle.org will troubleshoot their script for them.  Have seen descriptions of software 'provided' on such systems and the link for support doesn't go to their own documentation or customer forums setup for those applications, but, rather, to whatever community forum there is for the software.  Disgusting!

'spirit of sharing', Ken

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