Having a speed issue with forums

[bros]

So I recently tossed my forums onto a Linode VPS (The 512 with 512 MB RAM)

469600 Posts in 25237 Topics by 3289 Members

Caching (Level 1, XCache) is enabled

Apache2 server with php5 on Debian. MySQL database.

http://thecastlehall.no-ip.org/phpinfo.php

There is intermittent sluggishness of the forums.

[ziycon]

The memory limit is set to 128MB from what I can see, you may need to look at the way apache is configured with regard to max_clients and memory_limit, have a read over this(http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1425138/increasing-php-memory-limit-at-what-point-does-it-become-insane) link and see if it helps.

[bros]

So I uploaded status.php

Current processes:   163 (160 sleeping, 3 running, 0 zombie)
Processes by CPU:   apache2 (17) 4.3%, (other) (67) 0.4%
Memory usage:    92.702% (473384k / 510652k)
Swap: 28.939% (75860k / 262136k)

Things that are marked:
Opened vs. Open tables:
(table_cache)    143.3438 (should be <= 80)

Table cache usage:
(table_cache)    1 (should be >= 0.5 and <= 0.9)

Key buffer read hit rate:
(key_buffer_size)    0.0122 (should be <= 0.01)

Key buffer write hit rate:
(key_buffer_size)    0.5255 (should be <= 0.5)

Query cache prune rate:
(query_cache_size)    0.0647 (should be <= 0.05)

[Something like that]

Have you followed Twenty-four things you can do to make SMF go faster?

[bros]

Have you followed Twenty-four things you can do to make SMF go faster?

1. Don't allow people to upload avatars
2. Done
3. Just did that now
4. Already done
5. Creating a Large Custom Index now
6. don't use
7. Don't think I have it enabled
8. Should probably do
9. Need all the boards
10. Disabled Calendar already
11. Not going to use because I am on a VPS
12. Already using DB Driven Sessions
Addition 1. Have quite a few zero post members who are new and just haven't posted yet
Addition 2. Done
Addition 3. I'd have to see if the members wouldn't get reallly angry if I capped the posts in a topic
Addition 4. Already set to 15 minutes
Addition 5. Forum isn't really THAT CPU intensive

And that is it for the ones before the Intermediate ones.

[Spale]

Try to optimize your database tables via phpMyAdmin. That simple step solved my forum sluggishness.

[Arantor]

Try to optimize your database tables via phpMyAdmin. That simple step solved my forum sluggishness.

Not recommended if you're using InnoDB tables as the person above seems to be.

[bros]

Try to optimize your database tables via phpMyAdmin. That simple step solved my forum sluggishness.

Already have done

Try to optimize your database tables via phpMyAdmin. That simple step solved my forum sluggishness.

Not recommended if you're using InnoDB tables as the person above seems to be.

Not using InnoDB

[Ensiferous]

Swap: 28.939% (75860k / 262136k)

Your problem is here. You've configured your server to allow it to use more memory than it has, this means it will start using swap and slow down. Most likely you've not configured your database correctly or you allow too many Apache processes. It's quite common to see people set max Apache processes waaaay too high thinking they can handle more traffic then, but in reality it will just make their server crash.