out of memory, server restart, which process ate the memory?

[roopurt18]

Our development server is a VPS.  Something on the server recently caused it to run out of memory, although I'm not sure what.  Our host had to restart the machine for us and I can run a command that shows me my current memory usage as well as the most recent max usage, but is there anything I can use to track down which process ate up all the memory?

[effigy]

What's the OS?

[roopurt18]

CentOS I believe.

 

phpinfo()

Linux 2.6.9-023stab040.1-enterprise #1 SMP Tue Jan 16 01:09:22 MSK 2007 i686

[Koobi]

this would tell you exactly what OS your use

# cat /etc/issue

 

also, the output of this might be useful:

# uname -a

 

i suppose you could check your processes to see if anything is taking up a lot of memory or if your server load is too high by typing:

# top

 

and maybe view your apache logs/system logs?

 

 

also, is your system memory usage alright?

# cat /proc/meminfo

should show you those details.

 

 

effigy might have a better solution for you though.

[effigy]

Actually, I think you have it covered. Unless the program is (doubtfully) adding to the system logs, I don't think you can track the problem. My knowledge is limited here, but I think the only thing you can do is to reboot and keep an eye on the system via top (and any similar utilities) to discover the cause. You could run a search for recent core files; although, I'm not positive that they're created for memory issues.