On Watching Train Wrecks...

[Vin DSL]

Ah... the glory of shared hosting! Ever sit there and watch the idiot in the next partition crash 'your' server?

/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:19am  up 23:21,  0 users,  load average: 46.50, 20.19, 12.31
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:19am  up 23:22,  0 users,  load average: 48.12, 21.40, 12.79
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:19am  up 23:22,  0 users,  load average: 50.91, 23.34, 13.56
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:19am  up 23:22,  0 users,  load average: 52.51, 25.06, 14.28
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:20am  up 23:22,  0 users,  load average: 58.62, 28.61, 15.74
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:20am  up 23:23,  0 users,  load average: 68.79, 36.08, 18.96
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:21am  up 23:24,  0 users,  load average: 69.28, 37.79, 19.79
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:21am  up 23:24,  0 users,  load average: 75.65, 42.80, 22.13
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:24am  up 23:27,  0 users,  load average: 98.38, 64.11, 33.06
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:26am  up 23:29,  0 users,  load average: 123.14, 85.40, 45.06
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:27am  up 23:30,  0 users,  load average: 123.10, 92.28, 49.95
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:28am  up 23:30,  0 users,  load average: 123.01, 95.71, 52.67
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:28am  up 23:31,  0 users,  load average: 125.70, 100.42, 56.51
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:29am  up 23:32,  0 users,  load average: 133.66, 105.63, 60.11
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:31am  up 23:34,  0 users,  load average: 149.75, 120.03, 70.40
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:31am  up 23:34,  0 users,  load average: 156.42, 125.36, 74.28
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:33am  up 23:36,  0 users,  load average: 164.00, 134.79, 81.55
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:34am  up 23:36,  0 users,  load average: 162.36, 138.86, 85.72
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:36am  up 23:39,  0 users,  load average: 156.58, 148.76, 98.03
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:38am  up 23:41,  0 users,  load average: 162.94, 153.21, 105.76
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:39am  up 23:42,  0 users,  load average: 164.78, 155.28, 109.66
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:41am  up 23:43,  0 users,  load average: 179.46, 162.10, 115.58
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:41am  up 23:44,  0 users,  load average: 177.68, 163.59, 117.81
/home/public_html$ uptime
  5:46am  up 23:48,  0 users,  load average: 196.64, 182.85, 137.18

Heh! Got to '200' this time...

[Vin DSL]

Looks like Tech Support had to pull the plug...

/home/public_html$ uptime
  6:17am  up 29 min,  0 users,  load average: 1.14, 1.19, 1.34

And, it looks like they had to boot the server 24 hours ago also.

Hrm... Cron job gone wild?

[bfnation]

Out of interest, which server are you on? My site (on Iridium) was getting pretty hammered a few days ago..I certainly hope I wasn't the cause of this one!

[Vin DSL]

I'm on Neutron...

Things have been going much better since this last incident -- site has never been faster, actually!

[Vin DSL]

Heh! New personal best -- possibly a new world record!

[JPC-Greg]

nah, Ive created stress testing scripts before that have turned out a 999 load. I dont know how the machine was even up to display that but it was.

do these loads your capturing happen on the same times or days?

[Vin DSL]

nah, Ive created stress testing scripts before that have turned out a 999 load. I dont know how the machine was even up to display that but it was...

To JagPC's credit, I can't believe it either. That's why I made a screenshot. I knew nobody would believe it...

...do these loads your capturing happen on the same times or days?

Well, that's hard to say. It's been an ongoing problem, off n' on. You'll go through a period of calm, for days or weeks, then all of a sudden it starts up again. Usually, it happens in the wee hours of the morning.

In this latest incident, Tech Support said some remotely exploitable scripts were caught and disabled. The last time it was a script another user was running. It was disabled, and they were contacted. The time before that, it was someone's bad PERL script. Before that, someone was caught running malicious code... and so it goes...

Personally, I figure that's the price one pays for running their web site on a shared server -- the hidden cost of budget hosting, so to speak.

None of this has been JagPC's fault. Au contraire! Tech Support has done an excellent job of taking care of these situations, for the most part. There have been times when it's hard to convince them that a problem exists when server loads are spiking, e.g. motorboating up n' down for hours, but that's just human nature. It's much easier when it's 'stuck' at 300+...