Server is fast, but images load slow on only one domain

[jeff.meyer]

I have a dedicated server that serves only 2 domains. Both of them are hybrid image hosting solutions created for eBay sellers. One of the domains is running painfully slow as of late and I've narrowed it down to only the images that are loading slow. All text comes up lightning fast and anything I do via SSH on the server itself is fast. My WHM and cPanel areas are also running fast. I'm only experiencing slow load times on one domain and it seems to only be the images that are loading slow on that domain.

Are there any settings I may be missing? I've even disabled logging on the domain with no luck.

Here are some data from WHM (NOTE: JUST DID A RESTART):


--- APACHE STATUS ---

Server Version: Apache/2.0.63 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.0.63 OpenSSL/0.9.8e-fips-rhel5 mod_bwlimited/1.4 PHP/4.4.7

Parent Server Generation: 0
Server uptime: 40 minutes 17 seconds
Total accesses: 38683 - Total Traffic: 1.2 GB
CPU Usage: u7.27 s2.54 cu0 cs0 - .406% CPU load
16 requests/sec - 0.5 MB/second - 33.2 kB/request
150 requests currently being processed, 0 idle workers

--- END APACHE STATUS ---


--- SERVER INFORMATION ---

Processor Information
Processor #1 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #1 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz
Processor #1 speed: 1862.012 MHz
Processor #1 cache size: 4096 KB

Processor #2 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #2 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz
Processor #2 speed: 1862.012 MHz
Processor #2 cache size: 4096 KB

Processor #3 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #3 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz
Processor #3 speed: 1862.012 MHz
Processor #3 cache size: 4096 KB

Processor #4 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #4 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz
Processor #4 speed: 1862.012 MHz
Processor #4 cache size: 4096 KB

Processor #5 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #5 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz
Processor #5 speed: 1862.012 MHz
Processor #5 cache size: 4096 KB

Processor #6 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #6 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz
Processor #6 speed: 1862.012 MHz
Processor #6 cache size: 4096 KB

Processor #7 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #7 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz
Processor #7 speed: 1862.012 MHz
Processor #7 cache size: 4096 KB

Processor #8 Vendor: GenuineIntel
Processor #8 Name: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5320 @ 1.86GHz
Processor #8 speed: 1862.012 MHz
Processor #8 cache size: 4096 KB

Memory Information
Memory for crash kernel (0x0 to 0x0) notwithin permissible range
Memory: 2071788k/2096800k available (2095k kernel code, 23840k reserved, 874k data, 228k init, 1179296k highmem)

--- END SERVER INFO ---

It looks to me like I may need to just up the memory, but I'm not sure why one domain would run images faster than the other. Should I up memory? Should I also alter some config somewhere? I look very forward to any thoughts. Thanks a ton in advance.

[thewebhosting]

Configuration seems to be ok. Also, websites having more and larger images generally loads slow. I would suggest to browse your website and run top -c command via SSH and monitor the load of your server.

[jeff.meyer]

Thanks. With top-c all appears to be running as normal. I doubled memory on the server and although it seemed to speed up for a day or so, it went back to its slow ways. again though, it's only slow when delivering images from the one specific domain. Ugh... banging my head on this one.

[jeff.meyer]

Just had a thought - Could cpanel be throttling the bandwidth for this one domain? How would I check into that (it that could be the case)?

[Infopro]

cPanel doesn't throttle bandwidth.

I may be completely off base here, but have you taken a good look at that directory and your logs for that domain to make sure there isn't something fishy going on there?

I don't want to sound alarmist but an upload script, an image directory and CPUs spikes from one account sound like something other that system issues to me and worth a closer look.

Do you have CSF installed by chance?

[jeff.meyer]

Thanks for the thoughts Infopro. I actually just re enabled the log files for the domain, so I'll have more solid data by tomorrow. Anything in specific you think I should be looking for in the log files? A quick glance of what's come through so far (averaging about 10 GET requests per second) seems to be purely GET.

Nope, I don't have CSF installed. Would installing that cause any further lag times in the system... or require a code audit to ensure all on the server is working well?

Not sure if I mentioned it, but I own the 2 sites on this server, so I'm not worried about whether or not my web hosting customers of mine are happy... just my image hosting customers So, of course, none of them are using cpanel on the server.

[Infopro]

I suggested CSF because it'll alert you to many things you'd like to keep a closer eye on and can be very useful in finding problems like this, I think. It can actually help reduce load depending on how you set it up by killing off out of control processes if needed.

Your image hosting customers are the ones you want to keep a close eye on if they have access to upload to your server and you're not properly secured.

Not every image is an image.

Those new logs will help. Keep an eye on them.

[bvierra]

You really should change the MPM for the server. prefork doesn't work as well as worker for this.

[BareckObama]

Could you post the domain names?

[DjiXas]

Are you using keep-alive, check if it's on or off and what are its settings?

[airstream66]

Having a similar problem from what it sounds like. This is the second time that this problem has developed. My last solution was to migrate to a new server, which had worked great for about 6 months. If you were able to find a resolution to your problem please let me know.