I just moved to a new VPS which on paper is better than my old VPS - faster processor, more RAM, more bandwidth, etc. - but I have just discovered it all means nothing.

Apparently the only thing that really matters is how much kernel memory you are allotted when they set up the VPS and I assume that is dependent on how many VPS's are on the server.

So, my new VPS gives me slightly less memory than my old - which is causing hpptd to crash - even with this light weekend traffic. I am going to hate to see what happens after this long weekend!

Any ideas as to what I can change to reduce this memory usage - which incidentally seems to be high even when the forums are closed?

Something doesn't seem right as it seems from the memory being used that I need a dedicated server and not a VPS just to run the BB.

Are you getting CPU exceeded pages and such on your site?

I have seen this with many hosting companies causing many interactive sites to be CPU limited and causing outages on the site.

I am not really sure what you are asking as I really do not know much about the technical end

Right now though, with about half the normal traffic I receive "server load" is flashing red at "2.19" so another crash is imminent by the looks of things.

I might have jumped to some false conclusions about the memory limits and was reading some numbers wrong. The culprit may be statistics software running in the background. I have limited when they can run now so I will have to monitor this I guess.

You may need to tune apache to work properly on the new server; it's usually configured (by default) to have ultimately unlimited resources

You have'nt written one of your excellent FAQs on the subject by any chance have you?

I was searching the net for one and keep finding links to one that sounds excellent - but the site no longer exists...

Well, it can honestly vary, and a lot of it can be just trial and error... We have 384mb ram allocated, so our config is tuned low:

Thanks Gizmo, that gives me a starting point.

I am using WHM and they have a link there for Memory Restrictions - "This tool will calculate new Apache memory limits based upon past memory usage. The new memory limits will be updated in the Apache configuration."

I don't know if using this would be a good thing or a bad thing - does anyone have any experience with this tool? If I am crashing because of lack of memory it seems to me using a "Memory Restriction" tool may not be what I am looking for...

Personally, I find these CP's everyone uses for small setups overkill... they use a lot of resources lol.. you probably run under 20 sites on your vps? I run over 50, and just use WebMin/VirtualMin, which leave a tiny footprint on the server.

Gizmo, you have MaxRequestsPerChild 8000
I have MaxRequestsPerChild 0 - zero, diddly - can't be good, can it?