Running a small server...memory troubles...

[Jonathan Hutchins]

Quoting Matt G <linux at bizniche.com>: 
 
> See all those www-data users...and apache commands?  Seems like they're 
> taking up quite a bit of memory.  everything else looks ok (to me), but 
> lots of apache's and lots of getty's.   
 
So you're running Apache, but you don't have any idea how it's started or 
configured?  I seem to end up reading the Apache docs from their web page, but 
I believe you can install them locally.  Debian doesn't put things in the same 
places as RedHat or Mandrake (which I run), but /etc/httpd/config.httpd would 
give you a clue about why you have the number of instances you do.  Apache 
runs a minimum number of instances, and will keep a minimum number of "spare" 
instances open, so if you say "start five, minimum two spares", then when the 
third instance responds to a request a fourth instance will start.  For 
someone like yourself who's just playing around, a single instance is probably 
all you'll need, so configure one to start and no spares. 
 
Your getty's are the terminals that let you log in on the console - most 
distributions default to 4 or 6 consoles.   From the comand line, Alt-F1 to 
Alt-F6 should switch among several screens.  Again, I don't know Debian, but 
if you don't use multiple consoles (or you use screen instead or something), 
you can go into /etc/inittab, where you would have something like this: 
 
# Run gettys in standard runlevels 
1:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty1 
2:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty2 
3:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty3 
4:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty4 
5:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty5 
6:2345:respawn:/sbin/mingetty tty6 
 
Comment out each line you don't use.  I would strongly recommend at least one 
spare. 
 
While you're at it, someone recently suggested adding the following to 
/etc/syslog.config: 
 
# Display all output on VTY 12 
 
*.* /dev/tty12 
 
This is really handy - Ctrl-Alt-F12 from X or just Alt-F12 will take you right 
to the system log and show you what just happened. 
 
So what happened to the overnight lockup?  Still there, or did swapping the 
memory and installing Debian fix it?  Unfortunately, you changed two 
variables, so you won't know for sure what it was until you change one back. 

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