Well, you’ll want to disable any service you don’t require for the server. It sounds like you’re running X/GNOME on there, which would use up a fair amount of resources.
That said, collectinfo.pl also can use a fair amount of resources as well. It’s what populates all the usage statistics and such within Virtualmin. If you don’t need those stats updated every 5 minutes, you can certainly reduce the amount of times it runs, or even have it run outside of business hours.
-Eric
If your goal is to run VNC, then that would indeed require X.
While I don’t know what all you’re doing on your server there, it’s frequently considered a bad idea to run X on a server – it uses up a lot of resources, and there’s added security issues to deal with.
Administrative tasks can typically be handled by logging in using SSH (and perhaps Putty), and via Virtualmin within a web browser. But again, I don’t know what you’re using it for, perhaps your server requires X/VNC for some reason
-Eric
I have no problem with the command line, I’m old… but, uh, hey, nothing beats drag and drop!
STILL… over a GIG of RAM to run the interface? That’s absurd. And there has got to be a memory leak somewhere. When I first boot the machine, it runs great. It gets slower and slower and slower as time goes by. I would definitely be willing to turn it off and just use the command line assuming that this is really the cause and not a symptom of some stupid thing I’ve done or whatnot.
The only obvious system messages are the collectinfo.pl (now disabled) and top showing 58% RAM contributed to gdm-simple-gree.
I hazily understand that gdm is the Gnome display manager. I assume by your comments that I cannot leave only some crucial part of it running for VNC so I instead need to change some init file to prevent Gnome itself from launching at all at boot time and disable VNC.
I realize that this is not the main purview on this site, but, uh, any idea how to disable/completely remove (if necessary) Gnome?
So, you know that we don’t actually really know anything about gdm, right?
We’re server guys. Anything in X and the Gnome desktop is not within our particular domain of knowledge (we all run Linux on our desktops at home and work and such, but we’re just as baffled as you are when things act funny with desktop software).
I’m saying this not as a suggestion that we don’t want to help…just that you’ll find we are not really competent to help. There are some Gnome related mailing lists, and some OS related lists for whatever OS you’re running, that might be able to help. I’m not sure who the best option is…but I’m sure we’re not it.
A gig of ram as in 1 is not enough these days to run a production server. You need at least 2gigs if not more depending on what is being used. MySQL can be demanding if many sites use it. Of course if you got loads of websites that will also drain memory as well.
A good server with 4 gigs+ of ram will typically serve 200-300 websites, anymore then that you need to get another server.
Joe is right, though one option I might offer is that if you’re interested in running X/VNC, you could always configure your server to boot up in a run level that is text-only (run level 3 in CentOS/RHEL, or 2 in Debian/Ubuntu).
And then, launch X only when you need it using the “startx” command (though you may need to pass in some parameters so it doesn’t try to display on your home computer).
That would spare you a lot of resources, and you could still get in to use the GUI if need be later on.
There may be a way to fix the resource problem you’re seeing with GDM, but I don’t know what it is – however, launching X only when needed would get around that issue
-Eric
My server is not. It’s a fairly unburdened dual Xeon with 4 gigs RAM.
I’m not experiencing the same collectinfo.pl freakout as the guy above, but I am getting daily failures of Cron jobs. The 4:00am ones I would normally write off because that’s when my backups are scheduled – but the others are happening when there’s really no burden… though sometimes during a hammering or brute force.
Date Mon, 24 Dec 2007 09:45:17 -0500 (EST)
Subject Cron <root@asdf> /etc/webmin/virtual-server/collectinfo.pl
Message text
sh: line 1: 13706 Segmentation fault "/usr/sbin/httpd" -l 2>/dev/null
Date Mon, 24 Dec 2007 14:35:02 -0500 (EST)
Subject Cron <root@asdf> /etc/webmin/status/monitor.pl
Message text
postfix::is_postfix_running failed : Failed to query Postfix config command to get
the current value of parameter queue_directory: <tt></tt> at …/web-lib-funcs.pl
line 980.
Date Sun, 23 Dec 2007 08:10:03 -0500 (EST)
Subject Cron <root@asdf> /etc/webmin/status/monitor.pl
Message text
sh: line 1: 31307 Segmentation fault su postgres -c \/usr\/bin\/psql
-U\ postgres\ -c\ ‘’\ \ template1 2>&1
Date Sun, 23 Dec 2007 04:02:13 -0500 (EST)
Subject Cron <root@asdf> run-parts /etc/cron.daily
Message text
/etc/cron.daily/logrotate:
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:10 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:10 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:10 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:10 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:10 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:10 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:10 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:10 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:11 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:11 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:11 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:11 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:11 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:11 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:11 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:11 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:12 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:12 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:12 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:12 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:12 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:12 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:13 2007] [warn] VirtualHost 66.129.2.84:80 overlaps with VirtualHost
66.129.2.84:80, the first has precedence, perhaps you need a NameVirtualHost directive
[Sun Dec 23 04:02:13 2007] [warn] NameVirtualHost 66.129.2.83:80 has no VirtualHosts
I used to use GDM and/or KDE for similar reasons (the drag and drop can’t be beat).
When I was not using it I would run at “init 3” or just strait-up stop the Xordg and KDM/GDM service(s). Most distros have a “startx” or an “X” command, I’d do “init 5” and these. You can do all that from the shell. That way, you’re only running the desktop when you “need” it.
HTH
I’ve always had this issue with collectinfo.pl. It’s parsing logs. And so if you have large logs it’ll choke the server. I’ve found that usually there are a couple of “high traffic” sites that have huge log files (usually sites that someone is brute-forcing) and collectinfo.pl sucks up over 50% cpu.
I like the suggestion of running it at “non-business hours…”
