Well, since I do have access are there any suggestions as to how I may debug this?

Meh

So I'm having this same problem with memory allocation and resource s are being eaten. It looks like its eating a gig!

lep is entry process limit, essentially the number of scripts and such that can be run
Amem = average mem
Mmem = max memory usage
lmem = mem limit
memf = number of times the scripts have trashed because it reached the memory limit.


From To aCPU mCpu aEP mEP lEP aMEM mMEM lMEM MemF MepF
12-06 12:00 12-06 12:05 0 16 0 0 20 0 0 1.0G 0 0
12-06 11:00 12-06 12:00 0 33 0 0 20 492K 89.1M 1.0G 0 0
12-06 10:00 12-06 11:00 0 33 0 0 20 972K 290.0M 1.0G 0 0
12-06 09:00 12-06 10:00 0 33 0 0 20 0 0 1.0G 0 0
12-06 08:00 12-06 09:00 0 50 0 0 20 6.6M 1.0G 1.0G 233 0
12-06 07:00 12-06 08:00 0 66 0 0 20 13.5M 1.0G 1.0G 1090 0
12-06 06:00 12-06 07:00 0 50 0 0 20 6.3M 1.0G 1.0G 231 0
12-06 05:00 12-06 06:00 0 33 0 0 20 124K 87.7M 1.0G 0 0

So the question is this: What can I do to reduce the amount of memory this is eating (because the ISP has already said they will not increase my memory. They are using CloudLinux and it limits the cpu and memory usage per user). I'm somewhat stuck here. Do I need to seek a different ISP?

Have they told you WHAT is eating all of the resources? There isn't much you can do if you can't see what scripts are effecting apache/mysql, if apache/mysql are indeed what's going crazy, etc.

If you have a large site I'd recommend running a VPS (I use Interserver for mine [3 slice CentOS VPS with no included cpanel in the NJ center]).

So after further checking its not UBBS, its wordpress that is screwing up. UBBs is running happy as a clam...until wordpress sucks up all the resources... Time to go hit a different blog...

Thanks

Lol, not a problem; the UBB is a pretty light script, so unless you had tons of traffic it should be able to utilize it with little issue...

Problem solved, moved to a new ISP with better protection for my site (spam bots were attacking the old site). Anyway, so I'm on the new system and finally (!) have access to a php5.ini file. I have memory_limit=128M to alleviate some other issues I was seeing. I have one hurdle I cannot seem to get past. I have the following variables set:
upload_max_filesize = 5M
post_max_size = 5M
yet I get this when I upload a 682K image through image manager for one of the boards.

Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 134217728 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 6695129 bytes) in /home/content/52/10210752/html/ubbthreads/libs/ubbthreads.inc.php on line 898

It looks like its absorbing almost 7 meg to handle a < 1 meg image...or am I missing something? (*only one other user on the boards at the time and he's reading posts only).

well the allowed size 134217728 bytes equals 128mb which I believe is called memory_limit in php.
So your message tells me that your environment has 128mb set and did not have enough system memory free to allow up to 6695129 possible bytes that ubb is trying to reserve to use for uploading.
So that equates to 6mb which is probably the limit you set in ubb.

I am not sure how to check how much of the memory_limit is being used or what is using it.

But you could try to lower the ubb setting for now to 1mb which would be 1048576 to enter in ubb if you can't increase the memory_limit, At my site memory_limit is set to 256M

It's just the memory limit, and I'm not aware of anything to check what is in use...

Well I did find something to read it
create a php file with:

upload it to your server.
Then run it in your browser
But I can't figure out how to read what it really means.

what I got back was: