understanding 'top' and cpu performance

is each httpd a visitor?

[jamie]

hi,

when i run a top command (RH 7.2 on a 2GHZ processor) i can see quite a few httpd processes. but never any more than 7 or so.

is each httpd process a visitor who is at that very moment downloading a page? or do several visitors combine into one httpd process.

most of the time the CPU use is between 1% and 4%, but i noticed this morning one httpd process at 18%. should i be alarmed?

thanks

[marcs]

A httpd process is required per web server request. If needed (not enough processes are already running), a new processed is spawned to fulfill a new request. The # of processes doesn't equal # of visitors.

most of the time the CPU use is between 1% and 4%, but i noticed this morning one httpd process at 18%. should i be alarmed?

Probably nothing to worry about. Try seeing if that httpd process has children. Often httpd processes with higher CPU usage spawned child processes to execute a script or what have you.

Do something like :

ps auxwf¦more

look for the httpd process with the higher CPU usage and see if it has child processes and if so, check what they are/do.

[jamie]

many thanks for explanation,

i will have to delve into this a bit more. at the moment of course (murphys law) there are no resource intensive httpd processes running.