By oo7_golden_1 on

Hi Drupal Community,

I have been having an issue lately that I have been unable to resolve myself so I thought that I would reach out to those who have a little more experience and wisdom than myself when it comes to Drupal and see if anyone can offer any advice.

Approximately a month ago (07-15-2014) I got tired of all of the New release(s) available for your website message on my email and figured OK time to update core. So I updated to 7.29.

Everything went smooth and by the numbers.

The next day I tried to visit my website to respond to inquiries and questions that my users and site visitors might have posted and got an error message showing my webhost (Hostgator)and a 500 Internal Server Error which I have never gotten before… so I say to myself that’s odd. Let’s log into host Gator and see what is going on. When I log in I see my site has been restricted. I currently have a good standing with my host so I contacted them and they say that there is a script on Drupal that’s causing problems. What the script is or how to correct it they could not say.

I looked online to try and figure out how to pinpoint whatever “script” is running but I am not sure how to locate it much less prevent it from causing issues.

Now this doesn’t seem to be constant. My site seems to experience spikes, what I thought was sporadically but now I think that it might happen around the time that cron runs (currently every 3 hours). When I access my Cpanel I can see that I am allowed 25 processes to run and usually I hover around 1-2 but when my site is having this issue I am pretty much maxed out and I believe that this is my problem. When I “View all processes” I see a list of almost all of the same things running “/opt/php53/bin/php-cgi /home2/XxXxXxX/public_html/index.php”. I thought that since I kept my original .htaccess file when I updated core that it was causing problems. I did have some customization as I had set it to forward to the www address and had also noticed that the following text had been added to the very top of the .htaccess file as well. By whom I don’t know but left it.

#adding the php handler
# Use PHP53 as default
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php53 .php

suPHP_ConfigPath /opt/php53/lib

After about 30 min or an hour my site will settle back down to normal but I am losing a lot of visitors during these spikes and its becoming very frustrating as I cannot even work on my site when this happens.

Another thing I noticed is that my hosts CPU usage is spiking every couple of hours as well (this is why I think it might happen around the time that my sites Cron runs.

So here is what I have done to try and fix it myself…

I re-uploaded the Drupal Core files to my site replacing everything but my Profiles and Sites folders and then I manually updated my robots.txt and .htaccess files. *My install profile is OpenEnterprise (openenterprise-7.x-1.0-rc3)*

I reviewed my Status report and updated one of the .htaccess files (I believe it was in the PHP register globals and it got a green light but I still have a red on the .htaccess file on my Temporary files directory. I wouldn’t think that this would cause this problem though… would it? My site has been like that for a while with no issues. Everything else is as it should be.

I even went through and disabled any modules that I had not used in a while thinking that I might get lucky and find a bad module. No luck.

I have been getting more visitors to my site lately (11-12,000 a day) but when I check my analytics these spikes do not correlate with any type of spike in my traffic or site visitors.

Since my site seems to settle back down to normal eventually I assume that it’s something updating or running. I have also considered getting hit by spam bots around that time but this I cannot confirm. If this is happening than Mollum seems to be handling it very well. Is there any way to find out what is causing this to happen and of course find the best resolution available?

If anyone can offer any advice I would greatly appreciate it.

⋅ Categories: Drupal 7.x

Comments

oo7_golden_1’s picture

oo7_golden_1 commented

Here is a screenshot to demonstrate the processes being run through the Host Gator Control Panel.
http://www.imagesup.net/?di=9140728501912

VM’s picture

VM commented

seems to me that the host should be able to pinpoint exactly what is going on rather than using "script".

The tmp files directory issue isn't the cause but should certainly be corrected. It's a security issue.

to determine if cron is the issue, you can disable cron runs and test.

oo7_golden_1’s picture

oo7_golden_1 commented

Thank you for the reply VM. I thought so too as far as the “script” but apparently not :( I spoke to a few different representatives with no luck.

What do you think would cause those processes to pile up like that? And this is kind of a sporadic issue as it comes and goes. I am guessing it’s a cron issue but I am not sure how I would go about testing it.

Any other tips or suggestions?

VM’s picture

VM commented

I am guessing it’s a cron issue but I am not sure how I would go about testing it.

By disabling cron as stated. If the spike no longer occurs then enable cron. If the spike reoccurs. Then testing is complete and cron can be assumed to be the culprit.

Cause of issue in totality? I can't say with any specificity. Considering you admittedly left the site unmaintained are you sure the site wasn't hacked in any way? Have you tried updating to 7.30 (the most recent) to see if the issue subsides?

Jaypan’s picture

Jaypan commented

I currently have a good standing with my host so I contacted them and they say that there is a script on Drupal that’s causing problems. What the script is or how to correct it they could not say.

That sounds like a pretty good reason to switch to a new host to me. If they are unwilling to tell you why they are restricting your account, then you should switch to a host that is.

oo7_golden_1’s picture

oo7_golden_1 commented

I appreciate the time you guys took to offer your advice.

I upgraded to the latest version of Drupal (twice) and found that the same issue was occurring again today. Very annoying, and frustrating.

I have been considering looking into a different hosting provider but since this is my first, and only website, I have yet to switch to a different host before much less move a site over completely. Needless to say I am not looking forward to the process.

I am sure it’s not too complicated to do but still I get anxious about such things.

I have been researching online and have looking for a good VPS server but a lot of the reviews online are hard to trust as they all get commissions from the referrals…

I suppose that is my next step towards a resolution, thanks again guys.