CPU exceeded errors

Are you running a current version of Google Sitemaps?

Thanks, HandySolo. For safety’s sake, I was running the most recent recommended version (2.7, from 2005). I’ve now installed v3.0b6.

I’ll let you know whether that solves the problem.

Same problem after upgrading the Google Sitemaps plugin.

Does anyone have any other suggestions, please? This is driving me crazy.

Youre on bluehost, if you google you’ll see that youre not the first.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=CPU+exceeded+wordpress&btnG=Google+Search

I suspect the trouble is on their end, or that they can provide more insight into whatever it might be, specifically, thats causing the problem.

Dang that’s a mess.

drmike: what’s a mess, please? The service from my host? The CPU exceeded errors? My blog? ??

Nah, all those folks complaining about the issue. Spent 10 minutes reading all those forum threads over on bluehost and none of them every got answered by their support.

Gotta admit that I would be running. It’s common knowledge that bluehost is an overseller. I mean any company promising what amounts to a total of 10 harddrives of space with (oh I don’t know what 3k gigs of transfer amounts to in a month but it’s a lot.) that much bandwidth is doing something nasty in the background. Especially for under ten bucks a month. I mean I’m paying between $2,200 and $5,400 for each gigabit line that I have. No way you can do what they’re doing for that cheap.

whooami: I know I’m not the first, but is it fixable? Or is it specifically a BlueHost problem?

I’ve been looking (longingly) at alternatives from the search you suggested. I’m happy to move hosts if the problem doesn’t happen elsewhere.

drmike: thanks for that – very helpful.

Can anyone suggest good experience of others?

No it wasn’t. I wish I could help. Considering all of those threads, I’d call it a BlueHost issue. You can do stuff like add in the object cache and keep all of your plugins turned off but it looks like others have tried and those solutions didn’t work for them either.

I’d definitely try wp-cache again. That usually resolves most load issues.

However, if you look at the logs and you are a ‘lite’ site but are seeing multiple hits on index.php PER SECOND, that could be:
– search engine crawl (which there are ways out there to slow them down)
– DOS attack type thing
– spammer(s) hitting your site.

Just a few thoughts to throw back at BH, since this has seemingly occurred for MANY people over the past 6-12 months.

-d

davidchait: I’ve turned wp-cache on again as you suggest. I guess it sure won’t make matters any worse.

Here’s a snippet of the log file, which is as you describe:

Mon Apr 9 02:20:43 2007: used 1.48 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php
Mon Apr 9 02:20:43 2007: used 0.02 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php
Mon Apr 9 02:20:48 2007: used 1.84 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php
Mon Apr 9 02:20:48 2007: used 1.72 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php
Mon Apr 9 02:20:48 2007: used 1.36 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php
Mon Apr 9 02:20:53 2007: used 0.03 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php
Mon Apr 9 02:20:53 2007: used 1.76 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php
Mon Apr 9 02:20:53 2007: used 1.54 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php
Mon Apr 9 02:20:53 2007: used 1.33 seconds of cpu time for /usr/bin/php index.php

I was running FireStats for a while (turned it off as I thought it may have been the problem!). There was no indication of unusual spammer activity – I get the odd thirty-forty a day, and have blocked a couple of IP ranges in my .htaccess file to prevent most of them from getting through.

Interestingly, there’ll be an hour or an hour-and-a-half with nothing in the log, then it starts again. The worst I can see, at a quick glance, is 5 in a second.

BlueHost have now suggested that my index.php is getting stuck in a non-terminating loop.

Here’s the code:

<?php
/* Short and sweet */
define('WP_USE_THEMES', true);
require('./wp-blog-header.php');
?>

I’m pretty sure that this is the default, “out-of-the-box” file. And why would it get stuck in a loop sometimes but not others?

Okay, I bit the bullet, backed up the sql database, uninstalled and reinstalled WordPress at my host.

I managed to import the database via MyPHPAdmin, and it looks fine there. But WordPress tells me it can’t see it, even though the name of the database WordPress is looking for is definitely correct.

Yet another reinstall, and this time managed to import the database fine.

Hopefully no more CPU exceeded errors. I’m being very careful about which plugins I add.

Thanks again to everyone for their help.