I just posted this as a reply in a different thread, and now I am thinking it is actually more a question... I am sorry to spam, but here it goes:

I have a problem with my VPS, and I thought this could be the place to warn about this issue to people considering a VPS, and ask for advice at the same time.

My Hosting company is amen.es (I am starting to regret) and my VPS is a Linux machine with a MySQL database in a shared server (because the one installed on my server was too old) and Plesk 8.

So far I am developing my site and have only views and half of the core modules enabled. I don't have any traffic yet, and my site is ridiculously simple (you can have a look yourselves http://tepuidesign.com - no jokes please ;-)

However simple it is, I keep running out of memory while working on it (it is the second time that happens in less than a month). This are the two UBC parameters causing the problem (according to plesk):

  • privvmpages: The size of private (or potentially private) memory allocated by an application. The memory that is always shared among different applications is not included in this resource parameter. Used 3,764,017 & limit 4,620,000 bytes
  • Kmemsize: The size of unswappable kernel memory allocated for the internal kernel structures for the processes of a particular VPS. Used 35,942 & limit 39,648 pages

Is this normal that Drupal uses that much memory (or whatever it is)?
Is the problem having the database in different server?

More specs of my VPS here: http://images.amen.es/image/v5/locale_images/es/pdf/ES_ServidoresPrivado...

Thank you in advance

Comments

erikhanson’s picture

I've run into the same issue before. I have 4 or so Drupal sites on a media temple virtual dedicated server. I'd also like to know how to trim the usage if I can.

esclapes’s picture

I had an answer from my provider, and his main point was the following:

Drupal continuously calls to the database which is in a different server. For that, the server allocates some memory until the request is processed.

The problem in this case would be that sine if the request are not being completed so the memory is never freed. This builds up until the server resources are gone!

Does that make sense? Does Drupal leave requests open?

Is there any way to free the memory allocated too long?

Thanks

goonba’s picture

I'm having a similar problem on what's probably a similar server configuration but on a different host. Have a look at this article on David Seah's site. While he's focused on WordPress, just about all of the material in his article has to do with generic Plesk optimization.

I looked at your site and it looks cool to me. However, I suspect your still having memory problems as the server dropped me on a few pages.