Issue with downtime

[bujuk]

hai all,

just need some  idea what to. 

my forum is experiencing lot of forum downtime.  i dont have a clue where to start.  i dont have that many visitor these days as it used to be, but the downtime is worsen.  at least 3-4 times a day. the forum is on vps. so i dont dont think server loading is the main issue. by the way the forum was upgraded to  V2.0 from v1 using patches. 

so my question, is there a way to trace what is the main issue. what really causing the downtime.  can someone share how to scan for or malware or any bad codes?  one of the possibilities

will fresh installation able to resolve the issue? 

thanks in advance guys

Azman

[LiroyvH]

Well do you get any error messages?
Can you reach anything else on the same server when the forum is unreachable? Like a control panel, FTP or e-mail? Or perhaps another website on the same VPS?

[bujuk]

mainly HTTP 503 - Service Unavailable
my other sites seems to be working fine.

my first guess is spam.  but i dont have proper mean to monitor that. the forum do have spam and firewall mod. but than again, not sure how effective that is

[青山 素子]

If it's a 500-series error, check your server error logs. The cause should be detailed in there.

[LiroyvH]

503 usually means too many connections open or some other (process) limit is reached.
Should also check what's keeping 'em open if it's indeed too many connections, eg: check full apache status.
(Or the configuration has a really low amount of resources set. That's also possible.)

[bujuk]

from the error log there is only 2 missing file,  a gif and one html file.  i cannot remember putting in the html though.  but then this is an old forum.  anything is possible.  started with v1 with all the patches till v2.0.

actually i'm thinking of putting a fresh installation.  still reading the guidelines

[ashwani019]

Bujuk,
- Just check your server log and see the error, paste that error here first I'll give you a solution.

- It's weird you have less number of visitors and your forum is down many times in a day, I am suspecting that there are few files which are taking a long time to load, causing many server requests at a time and your forum is responding slowly.

- How many visits do you have on your forum may I know?

Thanks.

[bujuk]

thanks for the offer.  sad to say, i'm moving out from smf. 
personally i believe smf is a good free forum platform. it still has the important features and functions.  i still have few forums running using smf though.