One constantly posted question on LowEndBox and LowEndTalk is — how to get the same setup as LowEndBox, a WordPress site that runs on cheap VPS with 80MB of memory? Instead of doing a step-by-step explanation (damn I hate writing long blog posts), I decided to wrap it into a bash script that does it all.
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It is based on my previous script here, and it has been tested on both Debian 5 “Lenny” and Ubuntu 10.04 “Lucid Lynx”. Sorry no other distributions are supported. It is currently hosted at github so feel free to branch it and tune it to your heart’s desire.
Usage
Here is a quick step by step on how to set up a WordPress blog running on Nginx, PHP/FastCGI and MySQL on a low end box. Let’s assume that you are going to set up a blog on hostname “blog.example.com“.
- Go and buy a cheap VPS. Yes, you know where to find cheap virtual servers under $7/month, don’t you? 🙂 I am using my 6 pound/year RackVM VPS with 128MB memory to test this script, and the performance turns out to be quite good. YMMV.
Make sure it is either a Debian or a Ubuntu distro though.
- After gaining root access to your VPS,
# wget --no-check-certificate https://github.com/lowendbox/lowendscript/raw/master/setup-debian.sh ... # bash setup-debian.sh system ... # bash setup-debian.sh exim4 ... # bash setup-debian.sh nginx ... # bash setup-debian.sh mysql ... # bash setup-debian.sh php ... # bash setup-debian.sh wordpress blog.example.com ...
- Now altering your DNS entry to point
blog.example.comto your new VPS (or alter your local/etc/hostsentry). Navigate to it from your browser, and you should be presented with WordPress set up page. Fill in your blog’s name, admin’s password and contact email, and your new WordPress is online!Just repeat the last step (running
bash setup-debian.sh wordpress <hostname>) to set up more blogs on the same box.
That’s it!
Software Stack
It’s pretty similar to my own stack that runs LowEndBox.com.
- dropbear to replace openssh. Invoked from xinetd.
- inetutils-syslogd to replace rsyslog.
- exim4 to replace sendmail (if installed). Re-configured to allow Internet delivery.
- cron
- nginx
- mysql. Re-configured to remove innodb support, remove query cache and reduce key buffer size.
- php with built-in FastCGI interface. Running only 1 child process and respawn after 5,000 requests.
The lowendscript is also
- Removing some commonly bundled applications that should not be there in the first place for a minimal distro (apache2, sendmail, bind9, samba, nscd, etc).
- MySQL root is given a new password (which can be found in
~root/.my.cnf) - Installing each WordPress site under /var/www/<hostname>. It will create appropriate database, users and password for the site.
I have to say that it is still “work in progress”, but if you want to figure out the internals please check the source code of that bash script.
Memory Usage
I am testing the same script on the following 3 systems:
- Ubuntu 10.04 64bit (RackVM)
- Debian 5 64bit (RackVM)
- Debian 5 32bit (VPSGuy)
They are all showing different memory usage. I am taking the snapshot of memory usage AFTER 10 page loads on the WordPress blog that has been created to ensure PHP process is fully loaded.
Ubuntu 10.04 64bit
root@ubuntu64:~# ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.5 23300 1536 ? Ss 06:58 0:00 init
root 10124 0.0 0.5 23576 1496 ? Ss 07:34 0:00 dropbear -i
root 15742 0.0 0.7 17880 1944 pts/0 Ss 07:35 0:00 -bash
root 15754 0.0 0.4 14960 1084 pts/0 R+ 07:35 0:00 ps aux
root 24290 0.0 0.3 12508 788 ? S 07:22 0:00 /usr/sbin/syslo
root 24524 0.0 0.3 21064 1004 ? Ss 07:22 0:00 cron
root 25689 0.0 0.3 19512 972 ? Ss 07:22 0:00 /usr/sbin/xinet
mysql 26346 0.0 4.2 61812 11248 ? Ssl 07:23 0:00 /usr/sbin/mysql
www-data 27920 0.0 2.6 87768 7048 ? Ss 07:23 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cg
www-data 27922 0.5 15.0 122460 39432 ? S 07:23 0:04 /usr/bin/php-cg
103 30162 0.0 0.3 44356 1000 ? Ss 07:24 0:00 /usr/sbin/exim4
root 30267 0.0 0.3 28104 932 ? Ss 07:24 0:00 nginx: master p
www-data 30268 0.0 0.8 28744 2196 ? S 07:24 0:00 nginx: worker p
root@ubuntu64:~# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 262144 100500 161644 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 100500 161644
Swap: 0 0 0
Memory Usage: 98.1MB
Debian 5 64bit
debian64:~# ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.2 10304 740 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 init [2]
106 1414 0.0 0.3 42708 1004 ? Ss 12:26 0:00 /usr/sbin/exim4
www-data 1655 0.0 2.5 72028 6560 ? Ss 12:26 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cg
www-data 1657 0.9 11.7 98500 30928 ? S 12:26 0:03 /usr/bin/php-cg
www-data 3126 0.0 0.7 28380 1912 ? S 12:29 0:00 nginx: worker p
root 7668 0.1 0.5 23340 1528 ? Rs 12:31 0:00 dropbear -i
root 7831 0.0 0.6 17472 1716 pts/0 Ss 12:32 0:00 -bash
root 7836 0.0 0.3 14720 980 pts/0 R+ 12:32 0:00 ps aux
root 20169 0.0 0.3 18540 936 ? Ss 12:22 0:00 /usr/sbin/cron
root 24462 0.0 0.2 12236 732 ? S 12:25 0:00 /usr/sbin/syslo
root 25637 0.0 0.3 19256 952 ? Ss 12:25 0:00 /usr/sbin/xinet
root 25694 0.0 0.5 28380 1552 ? Ss 12:25 0:00 nginx: master p
root 32427 0.0 0.2 3872 588 ? S 12:26 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bi
mysql 32466 0.0 3.0 50420 8124 ? Sl 12:26 0:00 /usr/sbin/mysql
root 32468 0.0 0.2 3772 592 ? S 12:26 0:00 logger -p daemo
debian64:~# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 262144 61008 201136 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 61008 201136
Swap: 0 0 0
Memory Usage: 59.6MB
Debian 5 32bit
debian32:~# ps aux
USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND
root 1 0.0 0.1 1980 688 ? Ss 23:34 0:00 init [2]
root 14064 0.0 0.1 1704 512 ? S 23:52 0:00 /bin/sh /usr/bi
mysql 14119 0.0 1.7 20056 6968 ? Sl 23:52 0:00 /usr/sbin/mysql
root 14120 0.0 0.1 1628 536 ? S 23:52 0:00 logger -p daemo
www-data 15968 0.0 1.2 16352 4996 ? Ss 23:53 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cg
www-data 15971 0.5 4.7 29436 18576 ? S 23:53 0:01 /usr/bin/php-cg
root 16040 0.0 0.3 2700 1464 ? Rs 23:53 0:00 dropbear -i
root 16119 0.0 0.1 1880 684 ? S 23:44 0:00 /usr/sbin/syslo
root 16133 0.0 0.3 2780 1536 pts/0 Ss 23:54 0:00 -bash
root 17728 0.0 0.2 2352 896 ? Ss 23:45 0:00 /usr/sbin/xinet
www-data 17758 0.0 0.3 5004 1488 ? S 23:54 0:00 nginx: worker p
root 27834 0.0 0.3 4548 1236 ? Ss 23:47 0:00 nginx: master p
root 28146 0.0 0.2 2296 896 pts/0 R+ 23:57 0:00 ps aux
102 32065 0.0 0.2 6104 900 ? Ss 23:49 0:00 /usr/sbin/exim4
debian32:~# free
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 262144 44272 217872 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 44272 217872
Swap: 0 0 0
Memory Usage: 43.2MB
So to put that in summary form
- Ubuntu 10.04 uses significantly more memory than Debian 5 (PHP5.3/MySQL5.1 vs. PHP5.2/MySQL5.0). So pick your distro wisely and maybe you don’t need the latest and greatest if your application does not need it.
- 32bit also uses quite a bit less than 64bit, running exactly the same version of stack. That pretty much confirms what I posted before.
And hopefully the above script is useful for your next WordPress splog farm 😛
LEA (LowEndAdmin) is the original founder of LowEndBox and the visionary who gave rise to an entire movement around minimalist, efficient hosting. In 2008, LEA launched LowEndBox with a simple but powerful idea: that it was possible to run meaningful applications, web servers, VPNs, mail servers, and more – on small, low-cost virtual machines with minimal resources.
At a time when most infrastructure discussions were dominated by high-end servers and enterprise platforms, LEA championed the opposite approach: lightweight Linux distros, self-managed servers, open source software, and thoughtful optimization. This philosophy gave birth to the term “Low End Box”, which would come to define a new genre of hosting tailored to developers, tinkerers, and budget-conscious users around the world.
Through LowEndBox and its companion forum, LowEndTalk, LEA built the foundation for what would become one of the most active and enduring communities in the hosting world, prioritizing knowledge-sharing, transparency, and accessibility.
After several years of nurturing the site and community, LEA stepped away from active involvement, passing the torch to a new generation of admins, contributors, and moderators. Today, LEA remains a respected figure in the LowEnd ecosystem, credited with launching a platform and philosophy that continues to influence thousands of infrastructure providers and users globally.
LowEndBox’s legacy, and its thriving community, is a direct result of LEA’s original vision.
can anyone tell me how to write re-write rules for WPMU,both sub-directory and sub-domain,at nginx conf?
We talked about it here although it’s just for subdomains:
http://premium.wpmudev.org/forums/topic/nginx-rewrite-rules-with-wpmu-wp-super-cache-bbpress-and-sitemaps
That`s great tutorial
Will check against my own configuration.
Oh, poo. I;m getting a “Distribution is not supported” error when I try to run this on Debian 5.5. 🙁
Damn I’m tired. Never mind. I was looking at a Putty window opened into one of my FreeBSD boxes. Maybe I can get the top bar into a different color or something like that.
FreeBSD support coming soon… NOT! 🙂
should update to debian 6 as well. in case there’s a need of adjustment
😛 FREEBSD FOREVER! 🙂
Serious question since id mentions 6.0 and I just realized that it was available. Will this script work on a 6.0 install?
I thought you was a Linux User xO
Who me? Nah, the servers are all FreeBSD. I came up on main and miniframes and feel more comfortable with it. The 2 offsite VPSes that we use for secondary DNS are Fedora CPanel installs. Those are managed though so I never look at them. The XServe Raids we have are Mac OS which is some form of Linux but those are managed as well.
Mac OS X is based on BSD.
Is it? I thought it was Linux. Hmmm….
I never come down to the command prompt on those boxes. I always screw something up.
My upgrade to Debian 6.0 just failed with lots of errors and failed installs. Using this walkthru:
http://www.go2linux.org/how-to-upgrade-from-debian-lenny-to-squeeze
If anyone has one better….
Darwin, Mac OS kernel is based on BSD and the others.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darwin_(operating_system)
“Darwin is built around XNU, a hybrid kernel that combines the Mach 3 microkernel, various elements of BSD (including the process model, network stack, and virtual file system),[5] and an object-oriented device driver API called I/O Kit.[6]”
Just to mention, running “apt-get update” and “apt-get upgrade” after doing all that is a plus. Came back with 40 upgrades after doing all that.
Thanks again by the way. Probably be lost without this. Either that or I would just install FreeBSD and say the heck with it. 🙂
Its not working. please check this:
Please help me 🙂
Do as it says… Add –no-check-certificate to wget.
wget –no-check-certificate http://github.com/lowendbox/lowendscript/raw/master/setup-debian.sh
Should work 🙂
I think something went screwy with this script after upgrade to squeeze. I had a fresh reload of lenny on a quickweb vps, ran apt-get update, then upgrade, then dist-upgrade, then ran this script. Had some issues with the mysql install and php doesn’t want to play with nginx.
I’m poking around to see what I can find …
@raj – using squeeze you can add to your sources.list
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org squeeze all
so you get updated nginx and php. But maybe it’s time to open a LET discussion with improvements and suggestions for a new version of the script. BTW i tested the script on new squeeze box and i had troubles too, but i didn’t investigate too far
install seemed to go fine, but a pph file doesn’t get parsed, it just downloads.
What went wrong? php is running
ps: i am trying to tun php on de the default page, maybe that explains it
So is it just me or is this not working anymore?
I followed the instructions but my php doesn’t work.
I would check your box setup, script still works great.
Does this script handle ipv6 enabled VPSes? Meaning will nginx listen on both ipv4 and ipv6 with this script?
And any links on a “lowend” FTP server to add to it?
Nginx by default listens on all interfaces.
I used to use Pure-FTP for those who insist on their insecure and inconsistent protocol. Haven’t done that for the last 3-4 years 😛
Anyone know how to get dropbear to listen on ipv6? Just cant figure it out..
I am having a problem with bash setup-debian.sh exim4
Starting MTA: exim4.
ALERT: exim paniclog /var/log/exim4/paniclog has non-zero size, mail system possibly broken … failed!
Setting up exim4 (4.72-6) …
Setting up libdb4.7 (4.7.25-9) …
Setting up heirloom-mailx (12.4-2) …
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/heirloom-mailx to provide /usr/bin/mailx (mailx) in auto mode.
Setting up psmisc (22.11-1) …
Setting up perl-modules (5.10.1-17) …
Setting up perl (5.10.1-17) …
update-alternatives: using /usr/bin/prename to provide /usr/bin/rename (rename) in auto mode.
exim4 installed for mail
Stopping MTA for restart:.
Restarting MTA: exim4.
ALERT: exim paniclog /var/log/exim4/paniclog has non-zero size, mail system possibly broken … failed!
I think this may have something to do with inetutils-syslogd.
Any help would be much appreciated.
Exim was setup sucessfully.
Try to remove the paniclog file and start exim.
Maybe the process was killed for the OOM manager…
Also, you can check the contents of the logs for exim… mainlog and paniclog to see what happenned.
I setup new website using lowboxend’s package successfully.But it’s no reponse to upload a new theme in wp-admin.What happened to this? Would you help me?
Do you see any advantage to install “daemonize” in order to “start the PHP process and disconnect it from the shell” as said by dmmcintyre3 at freevps.us forum (https://freevps.us/thread-60.html)? Notice that the tutorial was originally ment to run via yum.
I ran basically everything, but the wordpress thing, and when I had gone into:
/var/www/nginx-default, and edited the index.html
to become this:
PHP Test This is an HTML line
And I cannot see anything, but a blank page.
I don’t think that my PHP with nginx is working, as when I had opened it (nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf) it had only contained the following:
================================================
user www-data;
worker_processes 1;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
events {
worker_connections 1024;
}
http {
include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
default_type application/octet-stream;
access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
sendfile on;
#tcp_nopush on;
#keepalive_timeout 0;
keepalive_timeout 65;
tcp_nodelay on;
gzip on;
include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}
=====================================================
So I’m not sure, as I am a newbie.
All the help will be appreciated
Debian 5.0
Look at the line:
include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
It means after reading this config file, look in the sites-enabled folder and load any of those config files. You should find a file like yourdomain.com.conf
Open that and edit the settings there.
I found my websitename.conf, but when I open it (with nano)
it’s just an empty file.
Using the modifyed script on http://freevps.tk/downloads/setup-debian.sh which basicly gives the functionality of adding virtual servers without wordpress, I also installed on a Debian 5:
rsync, sshfs, subversion, memcache and APC.
Then, I set up 3 domains and 3 subdomains serving static HTML files and dinamic PHP files. After all, I experimented the cleaning memory tips on http://www.w3bnet.com/freeing-linux-virtual-memory/
This is what I got after loading every single page of every domain instaled on the VPS 10 times:
hv1:/proc/sys/vm# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 250 28 221 0 0 10
-/+ buffers/cache: 18 232
Swap: 494 0 494
I forgot to say that I am using google appspot as a CDN and I am using base64 to embed some files into the HTML file.
By the way, the HTML file has 92.3 KB (92 KB from cache) and is taking 1.03s (onload: 1.26s) to load. Nothing bad for a VPS under US$10.
Interesting that drop_caches stuff. But it seems useless, because the cache helps to get performance.
Also, can’t be used in opneVZ containers u_u
I forgot: this is how the brand new Debian 5 was just before any optimization or instalation:
root@ds:/# free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 2048 34 2013 0 0 0
-/+ buffers/cache: 34 2013
Swap: 0 0 0
It is just not working for me.
I tried to change the /sites-enabled/default, to point to my WordPress directory, and it worked, but as you can see.
It showed all the wordpress PHP code.
So I then edited this default file to have the PHP stuff, did it correctly.
and when I go to visit my website it gives me that the page is temp. unavailible.
:S
Why isn’t anything going right with me?
hi, i know you said this tutorial is for advance user, but i like it and it uses a lot less memory than anyone else i found so far…i am a newbie, so here goes, i install everything on Ubuntu 10.04 and it works…my server main ip is 74.63.214.218 , i have rj519.info pointed to my server ip..it works, i get “welcome to nginx” . questions? i install rj519.info with wordpress already ,so how do get main ip and rj519.info both goes to same wp install? i have been on this googling 3 days and cannot figure this out…any help would be appreciated…thanks….ps can you reply to email….thanks..
Very great tutorial. Thanks so much
Script appears to work fine for Squeeze Debian.
Spoke too soon:
mv: cannot move `/tmp/wordpress.3289/wordpress’ to `/var/www/cynix.us’: No such file or directory
chown: cannot access `/var/www/cynix.us’: No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `/var/www/cynix.us/wp-config-sample.php’: No such file or directory
sed: can’t read /var/www/cynix.us/wp-config.php: No such file or directory
Reloading nginx configuration: nginx.
Looks like they moved things around on Debian 6.0:
http://www.codernotes.com/2011/146/nginx-default-root-directory-on-debian-6-squeeze/
Turns out actually /var/www/ didn;t get created. Not sure if that’s an issue with the script or Debian 6.0 or some gremlins or the phase of the moon but that’s the issue. Worked fine after I created the directory.
LEA, can we add this point to the instructions up there?
Thanks
I want to upgrade the nginx but I do not know how to do it?Can you give me to advice?
Some specifics would be helpful. The versions you;re using, the OS, what’s stopping you from upgrading, etc.
I follow this tutorial above!!!
use debian 5
neginx version is 0.6.32
php version is 5.2.6-1+lenny9
I want to upgrade all of them
The tutorial above makes no mention of upgrading. This is why I asked you specifically as to what you’ve done.
Again, you need to tell us what you’ve done and what’s stopping you from doing so and/or what error you’re getting.
I have no error to get.I only want to upgrade the version of nginx and php
I think the version are too low
and I want to test nginx version 1.0.0
subbed
I got an error
Your PHP installation appears to be missing the MySQL extension which is required by WordPress.
Ok, So I really was hoping I wouldn’t have to ask this question on here. I did all the steps and setup wordpress as domain horizonschurch.net. I only plan on having a one website setup. Is there a easy way to configure this so that when I goto just the IP Address I can see the site. I am wanting to do some testing before I actually flip the site over in the @ records of my domain. I am not needing multiple virtual hosts basically.
is this still working?:D
Absolutely!
Yup, just see my note here:
http://www.lowendbox.com/blog/wordpress-cheap-vps-lowendscript/#comment-31328
Thanks! Will check and I will try this =D
So I edited the php.ini file for allow fopen(), but WordPress Jetpack is still giving me a error. I restarted the php service and checked the php.ini file in the cgi folder. Can someone help me with this?
Not unless you tell us what the error is. 🙂
Jetpack could not contact WordPress.com: register_http_request_failed. This usually means something is incorrectly configured on your web host. Could not open handle for fopen() to https://jetpack.wordpress.com/jetpack.register/1/ is the error thanks for looking into it.
can any1 tell me how to install SUPHP with this script?
Hmmm, SUPHP doesn’t go with Nginx AFAIK…
hey LEB admin, how to enable php curl with this script?
thanks
apt-get install php5-curl???How do I change the port that dropbear listens on? and also disable root logins?
I edited the /etc/default/dropbear but did not help after reboot.
Thank you. This script rocks!
In the example I used xinetd to invoke Dropbear. See this discussion thread on LowEndTalk.
lol. 80 MB vps and running wp? i can’t imagine that.
how about max visitors in a time ?
my old server even with 1GB RAM, can’t handle more than 50 visitors in same time.
Thanks, LES, 🙂
I made my own script using this post for centOS, works great.
@rev,
Got WP work with 150 concurrent connections w/o problem on buyvmOVZ128.
Sorry for the stupid question, but what happens when the Linux OS uses all the available RAM (and also SWAP)? Does the system erases data from RAM in order to save new data? Using this same scenario (all RAM was used till the last bit) what about the cache systems like APC and Memcache/d? Do they help to make this “memory administration” or do they mess it up?
I’m not too sure with the technical details behind it, but I believe it should start taking away from your inactive memory (memory that has been allocated to programs but not currently in use). After you’re completely out of RAM and swap that the system can use, I’m not completely sure. On some VPSes, it’ll actually just start killing processes, but I’m pretty sure that’s the virtualization software and not the operating system itself running on the VPS.
This is just what I’ve heard over the years. I’ve never had any of my servers or computers have no memory left, but like any one could assume, I’m sure it would be extremely slow as your system would be relying on swap memory (that is, if you have any).
So it’s not a stupid question after all 🙂
I have 4 HTML/PHP small websites and 2 WordPress installations running on a 256 RAM VPS and this is what I get:
free -m
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 246 243 3 0 1 12
-/+ buffers/cache: 229 17
Swap: 487 230 257
Recently, I turned APC and Memcache/d off just to see if the would be some RAM economy but the memory went up in the same way it did before, when the cache systems were on.
From what I can tell, the sites are running fine…
For example, atipico.com.br and casachile.com.br
Nope, not at all!
If the memory is going way up, I’d check on what is is. Take a look at top (or even htop) and see what process is hogging all your memory. I’ve seen PHP spool up a ton of processes, and it made my VPS use quite a bit of memory. Then again, I’ve seem Apache take up a ton of memory as well.
This caching systems aren’t to reduce RAM consumption, instead, are a tradeoff to get better performance sacrificing some memory.
I took a screen shot of htop and put it here: http://imgur.com/P0E8W
This shows a lot of PHP-FPM processes running. As I was not able to configure this Linux Box to run PHP with the built in CGI, I had to use FPM. And it looks that I am allowing to many FPM processes to run, isn’t it? All the rest is quite irrelevant, I think.
I’m using Nginx and PHP5 (FPM) as well, but PHP isn’t use as much memory as yours (http://grab.by/grabs/8286866316c5efcf61abb3ef1bbe3e4f8d6ba09716.png). In your “php5-fpm.conf” file (at least on Debian Squeeze it’s in /etc/php5/php-fpm.conf), add in the follow to the document.
pm.max_children = 10
pm.start_servers = 3
pm.min_spare_servers = 2
pm.max_spare_servers = 5
pm.max_requests = 500
I use a bit higher values, as I’m not on that little RAM, but I’m guessing these values should keep PHP running nicely for you. 🙂
*following… sorry for the grammar mistake.
Good point, thanks.
I could access mu PHP-FPM conf file in Debian 6 with:
nano /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
The default values were:
pm.max_children = 50
pm.start_servers = 20
pm.min_spare_servers = 5
pm.max_spare_servers = 35
;pm.max_requests = 500
My question is: why not turn:
pm = static
pm.max_children = 4
as recommended here: http://www.codernotes.com/2011/7/install-nginx-and-php-fpm-on-debian-6-squeeze-2/
By the way, the bootstrap scrip recommends: “php with built-in FastCGI interface. Running only 1 child process and respawn after 5,000 requests.”
Yes, it seems that you are running a lot of PHP processes, you need to configure that in the startup script of PHP.
Also, that memcache daemon, are you using it? And you need xinetd? I see that you are running dropbear.
Btw, configure htop (F2 key and then display options) to hide threads.
I was running the default PHP-FPM conf. I’m taking care of it. About memcache, yes, I am using it, but very, very rarely.
About htop, I didn’t quite understand for threads was already marked to be hidden; I deleted the print screen, just in case.
About xinitd, it is included in the original bootstrapping setup-debian.sh:
function install_dropbear {
check_install dropbear dropbear
check_install /usr/sbin/xinetd xinetd
# Disable SSH
touch /etc/ssh/sshd_not_to_be_run
invoke-rc.d ssh stop
# Enable dropbear to start. We are going to use xinetd as it is just
# easier to configure and might be used for other things.
cat > /etc/xinetd.d/dropbear <<END
service ssh
{
socket_type = stream
only_from = 0.0.0.0
wait = no
user = root
protocol = tcp
server = /usr/sbin/dropbear
server_args = -i
disable = no
}
END
invoke-rc.d xinetd restart
}
About the first, the kernel uses the OOM killer http://linux-mm.org/OOM_Killer
About the second, APC “saves” temporarily the compiles PHP code, and then your PHP process doesn’t need to recompile every time that someone does a new request, and instead it server the cached webpage.
Memcache is different, because it runs as a daemon. Is a kind of database to mantain values in memory instead of going again to your database to request them.
So, in a way, it’s good to have APC and Memcache/d working together for they will help to manage the flux of data in the RAM, is it?
APC has a seamless integration. Memcache requires to implement the caching routines in your application.
Yomero, would you use APC in a VPS in a case like mine (4 html/php small sites + 2 wordpress sites)?
It seems that you are in a 256MB vps. I am afraid that you are running out of RAM. Using APC probably will help, but probably will be worst if you start to swap even more. First try to reduce your RAM usage, and as everybody recommends here, use Nginx if you can
Gracias, Yomero. I am already using Nginx and, except for the fact I am hosting 6 small websites, I followed all the steps recommended here. Is it possible that these two WordPress installations I am running is indeed using double the memory a single wordpress installations would do? If so, I guess that making use of the Multisite feature is the only way… (or would multisite use double the memory anyway?)
You can host 10000 sites without problem, the memory usage will be the same, I think is independent of WordPress. The problem will come if you get a lot of visitors and your PHP processes can’t be enough fast to serve all the requests.
So, no matter how many wordpress I have installed in that box, the big problem will be to determine the “expenses” of serving the requested pages, in the case of a high volume of visits. To accomplish this task, APC plays an important role I think. As far as I can see, by determining only one chield to run and “the number of requests each child process should execute before respawning” to 5000, the bootstrapping script is really counting on the processor, isn’t it?
That is the idea, a lot of requests to the same content -> APC will kickass xD
Ahm, I have done almost nothing about serving web pages, but I think the number of PHP processes is related to the number of cores that you have available. Probably 2xCore is a lot, maybe 1 or 1.5xCore is a good choice.
About PHP-FPM, is a fork designed to spawn and kill dinamycally depending on the number of requests. Putting a “static” flag will disable this feature (I think). So, PHP-CGI (the normal implementation) is a good choice for little servers.
Something continues very wrong here.
After changing the PHP-FPM conf file in Debian 6 (/etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf) with the follow:
pm.max_children = 5
pm.start_servers = 1
pm.min_spare_servers = 1
pm.max_spare_servers = 3
pm.max_requests = 2000
And turning on APC again, this is what I get from “free -m”:
Immediately after reboot:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 246 102 144 0 3 53
-/+ buffers/cache: 44 201
Swap: 487 0 487
After a day of using the server:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 246 229 17 0 24 135
-/+ buffers/cache: 68 178
Swap: 487 0 487
In brief, only 17 MB are free… I’m thinking about two options: limit somehow the memory APC can use and turning the PHP-FPM pool from “pm = dynamic” to “pm = static”…
Any suggestions?
It seems that you are misunderstanding how to read the “free -m” data:
In the first case you have 201MB free, in the second 178MB (Very big improvement, because previously you posted an output with only 17MB free)
http://www.linuxatemyram.com/ Hope that helps you to understand
Muchas gracias!
By the way, is there any Mysql cache system (like APC for PHP) that would be recommended to use in a VPS?
There’s query cache (and table cache) built right into MySQL. As for a dedicated piece of software, I’ve never heard of one before…
Mysql has is own caching system to reduce the I/O load for reads/writes, and is configurable in the my.cnf file.
The script is already tuning my.cnf file (putting everything in the processor backs):
cat > /etc/mysql/conf.d/lowendbox.cnf <<END
[mysqld]
key_buffer = 8M
query_cache_size = 0
skip-innodb
END
Anyone have any luck installing AWSTATS or equivelent on this setup?
Not sure why but I’m having to manually install exim4. I could have sworn that I had installed it during the initial run through on the script.
When I rerun the command, it tells me that it’s installed already but a updatedb/locate for exim doesn’t find anything. Doing a “invoke-rc.d exim4 restart” like you have in the script gives me an “unknown initscript, /etc/init.d/exim4 not found” error.
I think I’ve managed to fix all the PHP restart problems people are having. First an explanation. Ubuntu deletes the contents of the /var/run folder upon reboot to ensure smooth operation, the way I fixed this was to add a line to the init script.
Solution, create a new line in /etc/init.d/php-cgi after line 40:
env - ${E} mkdir /var/run/www/;chown www-data:www-data /var/run/wwwHope this helps!
If this is the wrong way of accomplishing this please let me know. LEA, thanks for making your script public, would you consider updating your install script with this change? It would save us Ubuntu users some pain.
maybe a tut on installing whmcs. and vbulletin like this? nice to hear back about it.
after some day of messing up, this is THE solution for noob like me… i would like to learn more about this… starting understanding your useful script!! thanks
I get this, Starting to bug me…
mv: cannot move `/tmp/wordpress.3912/wordpress’ to `/var/www/blog.b00d.com’: No such file or directory
chown: cannot access `/var/www/blog.b00d.com’: No such file or directory
cp: cannot stat `/var/www/blog.b00d.com/wp-config-sample.php’: No such file or directory
sed: can’t read /var/www/blog.b00d.com/wp-config.php: No such file or directory
Reloading nginx configuration: nginx.
Why you have a wordpress.3912 folder?
In the script where WordPress is setup, it uses the process ID to create temp folders (common shell programming practise).