Please help me discover why my site goes down every week

  • Hello all, I’m finally opening a topic here as I’m getting desperate with the problems I am experiencing. Basically what is happening is that almost weekly, my main site dbzer0.com will suddenly go down with “internal server errors”. I am currently hosted with Dreamhost on a VPS which means my RAM is limited to 150MB (but I can increase it at will).

    Normally, those 150Mb are more than enough for 4 WordPress sies and 2 Gallery2 installations but at these (random?) points, my RAM usage will spike and all of them (which are on the same VPS) will go down.

    This is definitely related to only dbzer0.com as when this happens I can’t access this site, no matter how much I increase my resources and I can avoid the usage spike by simply taking down only this site (renaming the root directory to something else for example) everything else keeps working splendidly. But as soon as I rename the dir back to its original name everything stops once more)

    I have tried many things to resolve it, even going as far as replacing my WP installation with a “factory default” one (so-to-speak) with no plugins and just the default theme. As soon as I restored the dir site usage once again spiked.

    I suspected a DDOS but I am quite a small fish so I can’t imagine why this would happen. I also checked my access.log and didn’t find much evidence to support this. I suspected web crawlers and I’ve even ammended my bots.txt file to slow them down but this keeps going on.

    I am really at the end of my wits. Is there anything you can suggest I should look for? Any way to troubleshoot this? Currently the site is down (I’ve renamed the dir again) and I lack ssh access as I’m currently behind a corporate firewall and lack internet access at home for the moment. So I can use only FTP for now.

    I’ve also contacted Dreamhost about this but in the past they haven’t been of much help with issues such as these and can take up to 2 days to respond so I’m not expecting help soon from there.

    So please, help?

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 37 total)

  • my 1st option would be to run a repair on the database tables with phpmyadmin
    sounds like the wp_options table might be crashing

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    Mate, you’re genius! I just run a repair on the wp_options table and it immediately worked!

    Thanks!

    Why would the table become corrupted however? Server hiccup?

    EDIT: It seems I spoke too soon. The site loaded once but after I reloaded after posting this message, it was down again ??

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    Ok, so I’ve run anothe repair on wp_options and this let the site back up again. 1 minute later, it was down. Another repair lasted 1 more minute etc. It seems that something is continuously corrupting this table?

    Deactivating plugins like crazy now

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    I think I’ve got the suspect. As soon as I disabled the Intense Debate plugin the problem seems to have gone away.

    I am contacting the Devs now

    UPDATE: Nope, it lasted for longer this time but eventually site went down again. Looking more

    UPDATE2: Deactivated some other plugins with DB calls and enabled Intense Debate again. So far site still up

    UPDATE3: Nope, down again after 10 mins or so. This time a wp_options repair doesn’t bring it up

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    I disabled all plugins, switched to the default theme, and Internal Server error (IEE) occurred after a while again. Argh!

    Now rebooted server, disabled all plugins (bar Akismet for spam) and repaired wp_options. Will see IEE happens again

    UPDATE: It could be that the server was being brought down by another one of my sites before. Now took down everything except the main site dbzer0.com and waiting…

    did you figure this one out already? i’m having trouble with my wp-options as well but it takes days for it to happen so i can’t troubleshoot properly.

    do you have wp supercache installed? i think that’s what’s causing my db to crash.

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    I’m still figuring it out.

    What I’ve done since is

    • Clean my Wp-options of its RSS (h/r)ash using the plugin clean options
    • Further Clean my WP-Options from its old info. Since I’ve been using the same DB since 2006, it had gotten a bit bloated (and still is)
    • Deactivated all plugins I use just a bit. I am slowly activating them (1 per week) and waiting to see what happens

      • I don’t run WP-Supercache, but I know it causes problems if one is on Dreamhost PS. I user Hypercache.

    my wp_options just crashed and all I did was posted something new. are you also using Live Writer to post?

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    No, normal WP interface. It happened in a similar way for me. I would post something and then a bit (or a while) later, site would be down again. I haven’t had it for the last 3 posting though so I’m hopeful.

    Which plugins are you currently using? Perhaps we can triangulate

    heres my suspect plugins
    wp supercache
    yet another related post plugin
    subscribe to comments

    as for the others:
    all in one seo
    google sitemap
    feedburner feedsmith
    nextgen gallery
    wordpress stats

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    Ok we seem to march on:

    • Platinum SEO pack (which is an updgrade over All in One SEO which has been discontinued AFAIK)
    • Google Sitemap
    • Feedburner Feedsmith
    • WordPress Stats

    I think it could be WP Stats at I think it’s the only one of these accessing the DB. Also Sitemaps is one that can grab a lot of RAM to generate the map.

    However with both of them active, my site has been working fine now.

    hmm i thought WordPress Stats doesn’t take bandwidth off your site since it uses www.remarpro.com’s tracking.

    anyway, let’s wait whether your site is gonna crash again or not and backtrack from there.

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    It’s not the bandwidth that is killing the site though, it’s something breaking wp_options

    well ever since my wp_options kept crashing i always check my db every now and then even when there’s nothing wrong with it.

    recently, i found that my db needs repairing (wp_options again) eventhough the effect is not evident on my site (did not redirect to install page).

    what I did prior to that was to edit some of the comments from my dashboard. i don’t know if this is relevant but it’s something we could use as reference.

    Thread Starter db0

    (@db0)

    How can you tell if your wp_options is corrupted?

Viewing 15 replies - 1 through 15 (of 37 total)
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