Page don't load at first visit

[kief24]

Hello,

i'm having a strange problem :
Very often, when i visit my website, and i click on a category, it takes about 20-30 seconds that the site tries to open the page.
After that time, i get the message : server not found or dns problem.
When i hit the back button, and try again to enter the category, the problem is gone, and i can surf trough the site without any problem.
But it is often the first hit on a category that takes ages to load, and result in an error.

What could be wrong ?

www.schoolplaten.com

[kief24]

Hello,

i'm having a strange problem :
Very often, when i visit my website, and i click on a category, it takes about 20-30 seconds that the site tries to open the page.
After that time, i get the message : server not found or dns problem.
When i hit the back button, and try again to enter the category, the problem is gone, and i can surf trough the site without any problem.
But it is often the first hit on a category that takes ages to load, and result in an error.

What could be wrong ?

www.schoolplaten.com

edit :

i asked the helpdesk of my hosting compagny to take a look to it, and they told me this :

Hello,

I took a look at your statistics and it does appear that MySQL server is utilizing excessive memory resources on your server. You may experience a slow-down for your site sometimes due to the fact that the server is using swap for memory. Swap is a sort of virtual memory that is stored on the disk for when physical memory runs out. Because disk read and writes are much slower, when a system begins to use swap memory performance is drastically reduced.

Because of this I would recommend optimizining your SQL queries as much as possible or adding 1GB of additional RAM.

Do you have any suggestions to reduce the exesive use of memory by the mysql server ?

Thx

[V@no]

1) how much RAM (memory) does your server has? (just curious)
2) Do you use random image speedup mod? if you do, remove it or disable random image.

[kief24]

1) how much RAM (memory) does your server has? (just curious)
2) Do you use random image speedup mod? if you do, remove it or disable random image.

Ram : 1Gb.
And i use the "[MOD] speed for random images"
I like the random image feature, and i would like to keep it.
if i disable this mod, would this be better for performance ?

thx

[V@no]

if i disable this mod, would this be better for performance ?

No, but disabling random image will.

That mod uses alot of memory, so you have to sacrifice either disable the random image and have your site working fast without random image or remove that mod and leave random image feature, but have your site working slower.

[kief24]

if i add ram, should the problem be fixed too ?

[V@no]

if i add ram, should the problem be fixed too ?

it probably will, IF the issue is what your hoster sais. If it something else, then upgrading memory will not harm you in any way (except for the cost)

[kief24]

Ok, i added 1 GB Ram to server, and disabled random images function.
Site is really fast now, problem solved.

But, when i see how much ram the server consumes, it always gets more and more.
Yesterday it was 1,2 GB, this morning 1,5 GB and now 1,8 GB.
Mem:  2050220k av, 1812892k used,  237328k free,

I think something is wrong here. 

server :
1 user,  load average: 0.13, 0.32, 0.38
104 processes: 101 sleeping, 2 running, 1 zombie, 0 stopped
Mem:  2050220k av, 1812892k used,  237328k free,

[V@no]

I know on my FC4 the memory used for caching as well, so as more programs starts as more memory used for cache (buffers). And "top" command shows memory usage that included the cache.
Also, in my experience, when a program require more memory, OS will give more RAM and degrese cache memory untill no RAM available, then SWAP will be used.

On my system the most memory hog is MySQL server, on startup it bites 400+mb at once 
Then Java uses 260mb, and each apache process takes 50-70mb (normaly spawned atleast 10 processes)

So, what you can do is first trace what process uses up memory the most and see if it will eat more and more memory in time..perpahs you have a memory leak issue.