I dont know enough about servers/linux as many of the other people here do and sorry if I repeat any of the earlier advice because I havent read it. Here's what has worked for our wiki although it has a smaller traffic ranking than rationalwiki (which is about 22K right now or close). Instead of Apache, use nGinx. Its good at serving files from what I've read before. Use the simple file cache: http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:File_cache Also run APC. PHP type/mode is fpm-fcgi. Try it out and see what happens. Some google searches for "apache vs nginx": http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/11/a-faster-web-server-ripping-out-apache-for-nginx/
Another: http://www.theorganicagency.com/apache-vs-nginx-performance-comparison/ This has the same NGinx + php-FPM configuration I mentioned. it says: *-As you can see, nginx offers a higher transfer rate compared to Apache, but also has less of a wait time between receiving the request and passing a response back. -I also noticed that nginx can handle more requests per second, and is able to ramp up as the load increases, however apache remained pretty static on this front.* In the 3rd and last comparison, you can see there are failed requests for Apache but none for Nginx in that scenario. That graph is: https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/TGZJ8_IWGWsn-0M6Txi9rrt7m5shn_Y5wwi475r8ewMatyVQyULg43lQvAvSN1V24P_9Eu_aezpyRMuWRbmf_XPXtjkN6QrsB9zbM7eLs4ESzrtR6_3ft-LgjA Could I ask how many page views a day (total for the site) you get when this kind of crash happens? Or per hour. Dan On Fri, Feb 28, 2014 at 10:52 AM, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote: > On 18 February 2014 22:11, David Gerard <[email protected]> wrote: > > > rationalwiki.org is getting hammered again. It looks like MySQL is the > > busiest portion - seriously just doing a lot of work. > > > > Update: so we're finally taking action on this. We're just putting up > a new 4GB VM for Apache, we'll serve the main site from that which > should free up a ton o' RAM for MySQL on the increasingly loaded 8GB > main box. (We'll leave minor sites over there today, move them at our > leisure.) We have a bit of cash on hand (we have no paid staff) so can > put up a few extra boxes as needed. Thankfully, horizontal scaling is > PHP's strength. I have reminded Trent of the high quality > recommendations for other things to do to be found in this thread ... > > (We just got sued by an aggrieved creationist. Thankfully WMF has > already set precedent for sec 230 applying, so we're not at all > worried about that. What we *are* worried about is well-wishers > knocking the server over again ... INCOMING!!!) > > > - d. > > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l > _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list [email protected] https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
