Server Running Out of Memory (CentOS 7.9)

Virtualmin
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SYSTEM INFORMATION
**OS type and version: CentOS 7.9, MariaDB 10.4, Nginx 1.20, PHP 7.4 and 7.2
**Webmin version: 1.973
**Virtualmin version: 6.16
**Related products version: Fail2ban Server

My serrver was running just fine for the last 2 years until I added approximately 10 new websites about 2 months ago. Now, my server keeps running out of memory every couple days and needs to reboot the instance. The culprit: “/usr/bin/python2 -s /usr/bin/fail2ban-server -xf start”
But why? Any idea what is going on here?
Thanks, Julius

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how much ram is in the box. code grows over time and ram requirements grow. I have nearly 50 sites and i have 64 gigs installed in my current box.

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I have 4GB RAM / 4GB Swap. When server boots it consumes about 45% of the RAM but as days go by that goes up to 87%. The only thing using up all that extra RAM is that Fail2ban server command.

This server only has 18 sites with only 3-4 sites that each get more than 4GB bandwidth use per month. I prefer not to have a single server hold all websites. I have other instances that have about the same number of sites and monthly use but they seem to hold out okay, though!

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fail2ban being large is unrelated to adding more sites. But, it can grow pretty darned large…though it’s probably not as big as you think (it uses a memory map of some sort that just looks really huge, but it’s mostly able to be swapped out without harming anything).

On a system that struggles to run fail2ban, you might consider switching to sshguard. It’s much smaller, but does less (but the most important stuff is covered).

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If you’re still having issues, this may help you. I had the same issue and I fixed it by following this. Virtualmin on Low Memory Systems – Virtualmin

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Hey Joe,
I will try remove some unused modules on the server and swapping out Fail2ban before I try SSHGuard.
Thanks!

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Thanks for the link. I will try to remove unused Apache modules as I use Nginx as the web server. Then see if this helps resolve the situation.

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You won’t have any Apache modules, if you use nginx as the web server!

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That’s what I was questioning too! Strangely enough, I do!

This is the list I get when I run “apachectl -M”

Loaded Modules:
 core_module (static)
 so_module (static)
 http_module (static)
 access_compat_module (shared)
 actions_module (shared)
 alias_module (shared)
 allowmethods_module (shared)
 auth_basic_module (shared)
 auth_digest_module (shared)
 authn_anon_module (shared)
 authn_core_module (shared)
 authn_dbd_module (shared)
 authn_dbm_module (shared)
 authn_file_module (shared)
 authn_socache_module (shared)
 authz_core_module (shared)
 authz_dbd_module (shared)
 authz_dbm_module (shared)
 authz_groupfile_module (shared)
 authz_host_module (shared)
 authz_owner_module (shared)
 authz_user_module (shared)
 autoindex_module (shared)
 cache_module (shared)
 cache_disk_module (shared)
 data_module (shared)
 dbd_module (shared)
 deflate_module (shared)
 dir_module (shared)
 dumpio_module (shared)
 echo_module (shared)
 env_module (shared)
 expires_module (shared)
 ext_filter_module (shared)
 filter_module (shared)
 headers_module (shared)
 include_module (shared)
 info_module (shared)
 log_config_module (shared)
 logio_module (shared)
 mime_magic_module (shared)
 mime_module (shared)
 negotiation_module (shared)
 remoteip_module (shared)
 reqtimeout_module (shared)
 rewrite_module (shared)
 setenvif_module (shared)
 slotmem_plain_module (shared)
 slotmem_shm_module (shared)
 socache_dbm_module (shared)
 socache_memcache_module (shared)
 socache_shmcb_module (shared)
 status_module (shared)
 substitute_module (shared)
 suexec_module (shared)
 unique_id_module (shared)
 unixd_module (shared)
 userdir_module (shared)
 version_module (shared)
 vhost_alias_module (shared)
 dav_module (shared)
 dav_fs_module (shared)
 dav_lock_module (shared)
 lua_module (shared)
 mpm_prefork_module (shared)
 proxy_module (shared)
 lbmethod_bybusyness_module (shared)
 lbmethod_byrequests_module (shared)
 lbmethod_bytraffic_module (shared)
 lbmethod_heartbeat_module (shared)
 proxy_ajp_module (shared)
 proxy_balancer_module (shared)
 proxy_connect_module (shared)
 proxy_express_module (shared)
 proxy_fcgi_module (shared)
 proxy_fdpass_module (shared)
 proxy_ftp_module (shared)
 proxy_http_module (shared)
 proxy_scgi_module (shared)
 proxy_wstunnel_module (shared)
 systemd_module (shared)
 cgi_module (shared)
 php7_module (shared)
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I have removed Apache and now a reboot starts the server with only 14% usage vs 55% before. I will give it a few days to see how memory usage changes before the final verdict.
Thank you all for your help!

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