Until I get my VPS server up and running, I’m hosting Command Line Idiot on a shared hosting plan with Dreamhost. Shared hosting is awesome!
Here’s the uptime report on the server that’s hosting the blog.
11:32:24 up 38 min, 3 users, load average: 266.63, 259.39, 230.23
For the uninitiated, that means that the current demand on the server is overloaded by 26,600%. It would take 266 servers to handle the load they’ve dumped on this one single wheezing box that my blog is sharing.
The end result? It just took 9 minutes for the main page of Command Line Idiot to load.
Popularity: 20% [?]
CLIdiot is not a professional geek. He's just a slightly geeky guy who thought it would be neat to setup his own server. These are the rants, tirades, and occasional insights of an normal person trying to figure out linux.
I used to use dreamhost too..and I think that value is very close to the highest I ever noted. I think I hit 288 load avg once.
That means that there are 288 jobs (on average) waiting for cpu time. Generally they say you shouldn’t have a higher load average than you have number of cpus.
Maybe they will get those other 286 cpus installed one of these days.
:)
With that load I’m surprised you could do anything at all on the server …
Fortunately not all shared hosting providers put that many people on a server. For a refreshing experience try WebFaction or RimuHosting. They both put 100 people or less on a server and on mine the load is pretty much always below 1.
I’ve been emailing dreamhost support, and they’re saying that they think it’s an NFS problem with their file server.
I’m up to about 15 days so far this year where my shared hosting sites have been unusable due to either hardware failure, poorly configured software (i.e. wild running processes that are allowed to choke the whole system) or overload.
And they wonder why everyone is leaving?