CPU Overload - How to trace what is responsible?

[SuperBaby]

Using "top", it shows that our server was heavily overloaded by "Perl". I believe that it is a buggy CGI program. How do I know which file is causing the overloading? Which log file can I trace and what to look for?

[linux-image]

on the "top" itself you will see the name of the program that is taking that resource.

[Host4u2]

via SSH, run "top" (no quotes) and do a SHIFT-P to Sort entries by CPU Usage. Also, via your WHM, look at "Sever Status/CPU/Memory/MySQL Usage" for hints.

[sb-host]

Using "top", it shows that our server was heavily overloaded by "Perl". I believe that it is a buggy CGI program. How do I know which file is causing the overloading? Which log file can I trace and what to look for?

I had a similar issue last week. Two perl processes kept running, and were consuming the CPU time. The owner was "perl", and there was no trace of it in WHM while looking at the CPU Use page.
I finally did a "kill - [PID]" and it stopped the process, and it never came back. No ill effects were noted either.
Glenn

[AndyReed]

This is what is called "exploit". It is a way of breaking into a system. An exploit takes advantage of a weakness in a system in order to hack it. Exploits are the root of the hacker culture. Hackers gain fame by discovering an exploit. Others gain fame by writing scripts for it. Legions of script-kiddies apply the exploit to millions of systems, whether it makes sense or not. Since people make the same mistakes over-and-over, exploits for very different systems start to look very much like each other. Most exploits can be classified under major categories: buffer overflow, directory climbing, defaults, Denial of Service.

You need to protect your server and business!