Out of memory! Message in Error Log

I just had the same problem. Is there any way to fix it other than restarting MySQL? (This is not a really good idea on a shared hosting server.)

 

This issue began for me back in June. The way I fixed the issue is I added more swap (was 1GB, now 3GB). My question is why all of a sudden did cpanel functions (update, backup, etc...) begin (and continues) to consume a great deal of memory?

The reason I ask is I feel that cpanel is consuming so much memory that it is taking away from the normal daily operation. For example, I can reboot my server and during the day I will be using about half of my 3.4GB physical memory with MySql utilizing about 14% and no swap being used. After/during cpanel cron runs the update, bincheck, or backup, all of my physical memory is consumed and swap has to be utilized. Also MySql memory drops to about 11%.

At the time I did open a support ticket but the response was try this or that. Instead of suggesting "this or that" why not find out the cause and fix it?

Before this all occurred, my backups used to take no longer than 30 minutes and now they take almost 3 hours.

Attached is a graph of the last 24 hours and last 7 days that show the spike in memory everyday that cpanel cron occurs.

 

Thanks for the reply Michael. Yes, I have read that post numerous times and I still do not fully understand how memory works. To tell you the truth, I cannot even see the excessive memory usage in top when it occurs but I can certainly see it in the graphs. I just wanted to post how I remedied (not "fix" as I stated before) the issue so others would know.

I did not get anywhere with the ticket I submitted so I am not sure I want to revisit it. All I know is that there is excessive memory usage when cpanel runs any type of function. It seems to me that it is using very little CPU thus putting a strain on memory usage.?

The spikes you see in the above graphs are only from cpanel updates. I ended up doing backups once a week instead of the usual every other day because it was interfering with other crons that I have set up to run in the middle of the night. I am going to turn off updates and backups for a while and see what the results are.

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I meant to post this in my previous post but it appears that I am unable to edit my posts. Here is my current memory usage.

Current Memory Usage

Code:

             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       3572736    3070692     502044          0          0    2001520
-/+ buffers/cache:    1069172    2503564
Swap:      3572736     192512    3380224
Total:     7145472    3263204    3882268

 

Well unfortunately there is no way to completely disable cpanel updates. The update check still runs and still consumes a great amount of memory.

So again, my question is why does cpanel consume so much memory? It did not used to and even the documentation still states that the default cpanel max memory is 128MB. https://documentation.cpanel.net/display/1144Docs/Tweak+Settings

Good luck trying to change this value lower than 512MB because it will not allow you to. What I don't understand is cpanel is obviously using more than 512MB of memory so why are the processes not being killed?

So as it stands currently, you need at least 1GB of memory just for cpanel use. If I want to keep my performance up I will need to add more memory.

{sarcasm}Thanks CPanel!{/sarcasm}

 

Support Request Id 5202305 - Cron Backups

The subjuect is Cron Backups but that was before I realized it was updates that was causing high memory usage as well.

 

Performance (slowness, responsiveness). I can reboot the server and my websites will run great all day long but after updates/backups run, my sites become slow. It would also be nice if my backups only took 30 minutes to backup like they used to instead of 3 hours.

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Why can't anyone explain why cPanel utilizes at least 1GB of memory?