After a day of trying to figure out why one of my web servers was locking up, I found that it was using a bit too much memory. But I had no idea how much, and Linux memory reporting is a bit arcane at best. Especially with something like apache + PHP using shared memory pools. So after some analysis, I came up with the following script:

apachemem.pl

It had the following output:

Total memory available: 3.21G
Total used by apache2 (451 instances): 3.80G
Total used by other processes: 0.12G

Average memory used per apache2 process: 8.63M
Recommended number of processes based on Average: 381
Needed memory for 500 processes based on Average: 4.21G

Max memory used for apache2 process: 17.61M
Recommended number of processes based on Max: 186
Needed memory for 500 processes based on Max: 8.60G

Mean plus two Standard Deviations (bulk of usage under max): 11.28M
Recommended number of processes based on Mean + 2*Stdev: 291
Needed memory for 500 processes based on Mean + 2*Stdev: 5.51G

At the time I ran it, I had 450 instances out of a configured max of 700 active. Come to find out I only had the ram to support about 380 of those at best. :(

Hopefully some other people find this useful, as it's pretty hard to get a straight answer on "How many processes can I support?" Now if only php and the standard modules would officially work with the worker MPM.

So, for the web servers at work, we had disabled Apache's KeepAlive settings due to possible denial of service. As part of some performance tuning I had turned it back on with a low timeout (4 seconds) to see how it held up. Here's the results:



The drop on the right is where KeepAlive was turned on. We did need to increase our MaxServers a bit for when load got high, but overall it's resulted in a huge speedup for the servers and less thrashing in general.

I probably should have mentioned it when it launched last week, but The Escapist launched last Tuesday. It's a magazine put out by the people I work with that deals with the Gaming Industry via a different topic each week. There's a new issue every Tuesday, with a supplement every Friday.

I personally was never much for writing, so mainly I just babysit and maintain the server and software behind the site. Note to self: Apache does NOT like being restarted when there's a few thousand connections to the web server. Trying to rotate logs to address an internal issue caused a chain of events simultaneously with a double Slashdotting. But the actual traffic it handled well once it was back up. *whistles innocently*

This week deals with mobile gaming. Check it out.

Heading out to E3 in LA for my first time. Not sure exactly what I'll be doing yet, but should be an interesting experience. Especially since I'm going as Press. Free Loot!

This is what you get when you're trapped in an office with a Canadian and a Mac user for too long.
End of days.

Welp, the final Ryzom open Beta ended today, for better or worse. The next couple weeks should prove interesting. Still not sure what we're going to be doing during the downtime. I'm voting for a 3 day bender where we all see just how drunk we can be while playing Cyberpunk.

Which reminds me, Alex has dropped hints at the Ryzom release party being a bash of great proportions. And Themis already has a rep for crazy parties. The five or so he's thrown in the 3 months I've been here have been a blast, but fairly tame. And he never skimps on the high quality booze either. ;) This should be good, as long as it isn't anywhere near my shift post-release. Best we can hope for is a slightly pre-release date where we all have off...

But of course, can't give any details of what does go on. What happens at a Themis party stays at a Themis party. :p


...Yeah so. Get your damn Ryzom pre-orders in now. Az likes getting payed.

Yeah, so a few weeks ago I got really bored at work. It was after my shift, and I was hanging around abusing the computer resources as usual. Then... I noticed that we had all these poor little Ryzom Beta CDs laying around looking all lonely.

So, I was walking around giving my eyes a break from the 'putar, and decided to build a tower of doom like I used to do with playing cards. A half hour later I had a nice 11 story tower. Topped off with an empty bottle of Bawls for that artistic touch.

It managed to survive all weekend, and Monday morning (when I wasn't here), everyone else came in and saw it. They took some pictures and then took a video of them knocking it down. Unfortunately SOMEONE taped over the video.

But we do have the pictures (And we even put the intern to work as a display model! ...And I'm probably going to get coffee poisoning for putting that online. :) )