Maxing out on memory? 500 Internal Server Errors

  • I’m going out of my mind a bit trying to troubleshoot this issue. I’ve been in constant communication with both my hosting support as well as theme developer trying to pinpoint what is causing these errors to continuously crop up:

    [Thu Mar 31 20:36:05 2016] [error] [client ##.##.##.##] (12)Cannot allocate memory: couldn’t create child process: /opt/suphp/sbin/suphp for /home/dir/public_html/mysite.com/index.php, referer: https://mysite.com/wp-admin/admin.php

    The result is that when accessing my site, I get intermittent 500 internal server errors (e.g., 1 every 5 page loads). As I track the resource usage in my cPanel, I see that the RAM and CPU both skyrocket (e.g. RAM past 1GB) on and off constantly. This includes when nobody else is accessing my site (e.g. according to Google Analytics).

    I’ve replaced all my core files, experimented with turning off ALL plugins (though I only have 4), as well as switched to Twenty Sixteen theme. NOTHING seems to affect the RAM usage. I also tried optimizing my MySQL DB, but no change from that either.

    Does anyone have any idea what is going on, or have any other ideas on how to troubleshoot? The hosting company insists it is a WordPress problem, while my theme developer insists it is a server-side issue. I don’t get enough visitors to warrant such intense resource usage…and as I mentioned, the overuse seems to be happening when nobody else is accessing the site.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)

  • It would be great if we could have a look at your website to see what is going on.

    A couple of questions:

    1. Are you on shared hosting or a VPS?

    2. Are you hosting any other sites that could be causing this problem?

    3. What is the size of your database?

    Thanks.

    Thread Starter himynameisvan

    (@himynameisvan)

    Sorry about that! Forgot to include – the site is supernovangirl.com.

    1. Are you on shared hosting or a VPS? shared
    2. Are you hosting any other sites that could be causing this problem? not according to the error logs; all errors arise from this domain (this was confirmed by host as well)
    3. What is the size of your database? do you mean in terms of file size? i believe just over 7 MB

    Thank you!

    If you have disabled your plugins and switched to the WordPress 2016 theme and the problem is still persisting, I don’t see why the hosting company is telling you that it’s your fault. It sounds like a misconfiguration on the server’s end.

    The other thing that this could be is a permission issue. You can ask your server to try repairing the permissions and see if that makes a difference.

    I have been browsing your site and I have not yet experienced a 500 error. Your site seems to be loading just fine from where I am.

    I just had another thought about this. The fact that I don’t see any of these 500 errors…

    Is this only happening when you are logged in to the website?

    Thread Starter himynameisvan

    (@himynameisvan)

    It happens MORE when I am, but it still happens if I’m logged out, and is happening to other users too! Have been emailed a few times with screencaps from friends and even from my theme developer.

    If I simply ask my server to repair the permissions, will they know what to do? You’re talking about permissions to each of the WP files/directories, right? To 644 or otherwise?

    ALSO: I also took a look at my latest visitors log and isolated a single visitor that I knew of (my friend) by IP and his access to a single page on the site. It says total data sent was 98 MB, 284164 bytes of which went to Heap’s CSS alone.

    Does this sound normal? I feel like it’s a lot of data to be sent for a single visitor…

    Thanks very much!

    Thread Starter himynameisvan

    (@himynameisvan)

    I’m now suspecting it has something to do with my being logged into WordPress – testing now by staying logged out to see if I still witness strange spikes in memory usage…

    Your host should have a script that can be run to fix the permissions. There are some scripts out there on the web available for download but they should know what they are doing.

    What do you mean by 98MB, 284164 bytes? Why those different numbers? I just checked your CSS file and it seems to be normal so I don’t think it’s related to that.

    I also wanted to tell you that there are 743 other websites on the same IP address that you are using, and some of them look quite seedy. I don’t care what your host tells you…it is possible that someone else’s website on the server is responsible for the problems that you are having. It might be time to look for a new host.

    Thread Starter himynameisvan

    (@himynameisvan)

    Wow. Thanks for that insight, that’s incredibly helpful. May I ask how you were able to look up the info about the number of sites on the same IP?

    It really seems like all issues point to the host at this point, so I will look into changing – do you have any you recommend? I have been investigating BlueHost.

    I really think I should be fine with a shared hosting plan as it’s what I’ve always used – am I wrong in this assumption?

    Thank you again!

    You can do a ‘reverse’ lookup on IP addresses to see which other domains are being hosted on that same IP & server.

    Shared hosting should be fine for now, although your goal should be to grow your site and traffic to a point where you need to upgrade to a VPS or dedicated. That is a good problem to have when that happens.

    It’s been a long time since I’ve used shared hosting but I’ve heard some good things about BlueHost and InMotion. Just make sure that you backup everything before you make the switch.

    I’ve been getting maxed out ram and cpu usage and I/O maxes lately as well. I’ve been doing this stuff a long time and it is just now starting to show. I use Godaddy/WildWest reseller. I have a feeling we are dealing with the same issue.

Viewing 11 replies - 1 through 11 (of 11 total)
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