[pmwiki-users] Pmwiki cpu/memory usage on server for a non zero visitor installation

ABClf languefrancaise at gmail.com
Tue Dec 9 13:12:04 CST 2008


Hello the list,

Two month ago, I had to rent a now host for my site (shared server).
As I would like to use a wiki, and most preferably pmwiki, because it is
light and great, for part of my site, I have first readen the [[webhosts]]
page and chosen LunarPages that was said there to run pmwiki with no issues.
It was a cheap solution too. It is so difficult to know where to be hosted.
I use last pmwiki with some cookbooks, a few non complex pagelists for 200
pages (doc not included ; about 600 doc included).
Lunarpages disabled my pmwiki script very quickly because, they said :
«During a routine monitoring on our servers, we have found that your account
is utilizing excessive amounts of system resources. Here are your usage
reports :
langu12 languefrancaise.net cpu 4.37 memory 1.48 mysql 0.0
Top Process %CPU 100 /usr/bin/php /home/langu12/public_html/docs/pmwiki.php
Top Process %CPU 64.0 /usr/bin/php /home/langu12/public_html/docs/pmwiki.php
Top Process %CPU 28.0 /usr/bin/php
/home/langu12/public_html/forum/viewtopic.php».
I had to wait for near 2 long days until I got more information : «The shown
usage is actually a report displayed by WHM, an utility which is embedded
into the CPanel. What it does is that it simply gets the CPU, Memory and
MySQL usages for every user and averages it, in percents per core
utilization (respectively percents of the entire memory available and mysql
queries per second), for a 24hours period. As such, this utility can not be
used to pinpoint where the issue lies - it only tells us that there is
actually an issue.
With this being said, your average CPU utilization was ~3times the maximum
we'd consider appropriate for a shared environment for an entire week before
getting disabled. Furthermore, the average CPU quoted at the time when the
script got disabled is showing a value of over 4%, which suggests that this
has been done exactly when its usage was at the highest. For the past two
days, after your script has been disabled, your account averaged a 0.5% in
both CPU and memory usage, a value which is acceptable on a shared
environment. (...) As a conclusion, an 'unvisited' installation of pmwiki
will not cause any issues, server-wide. A 10visitors pmwiki installation
will, again, cause absolutely no issues on the server, which confirms the
fact that the script is being supported and can run on our servers. "How
many visitors" you can have within a script is not something that we could
establish, unfortunately)».

I am happy to be said that a zero visitor pmwiki installation can be run on
that host but, sadly, I had some visitors. No more than 15 wiki users
(readers) online, according to online scripts. I was also using a
lightweight forum script (punbb) in another folder (also said to overconsume
(viewtopic) with about 30 users max at same time).

So I have a few questions to understand what is true and what is wrong, and
what are pmwiki memory and cpu requirments  :
1-how is pmwiki cpu and memory usage when running on a public server in a
basic installation for some readers ? do some people here run a visited
pmwiki (say 100-200 visitors/day) on a shared server ? do they have
cpu/memory issues, do they know their memory/cpu usage ? what sort of
problem if any with their host ?
2-I guess other people here run pmwiki in a dedicated environment and can
see the resource consumed : if it is a visited installation, with a few
visitors, I would like to know what is the cpu/memory usage they can track
concerning pmwiki ? do they notice pmwiki is a not so light program ? I
dont' see doc about that on pmwiki.org.
-For my knwoledge, is it true that 4% cpu/memory is like overusage on a
shared environment ? is 0,5%, said to be an acceptable value by the
«support», realistic ? I guess it's a joke, I am wrong ?

At this time, my site is stil disabled and I have no hope it will come back
on Lunarpages. I had to migrate my data to a free host, waiting for a
solution.
If one need to evaluate the pmwiki installation I was running, here is the
temporary url : http://languefrancaise.free.fr/docs

Thank you the list ! :)
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