[Zope] Zope woes continue - server going down regularly.

chas panda@skinnyhippo.com
Tue, 07 Dec 1999 17:17:14 +0800


This morning : using Zope 2.01
------------------------------

>>> Alternatively, the server just hangs and doesn't respond
>>> (but ps -aux shows the process is running).
>>
>>Is it spinning? (consuming 100% CPU resources?) or hung? (consuming
>>none..)
>
>Sorry, you're right, it was 'spinning' - 100% CPU resources.
>Does that suggest anything in particular ?

Ok, I feel like the Cold-Fusion-Man today, I have a window open
on my desktop showing the 'top' output of my server. Whenever
the CPU usage goes up to over 90%, I know that the PCGI process
is no longer responding and I restart Zope. Restarting the 
server does not help any more than restarting Zope itself.
Repeat ad nauseum every 30-45 minutes if I'm lucky.


This afternoon : using Zope 2.10 
--------------------------------
I installed and set up Zope 2.10 (using PCGI behind Apache) and 
transfered my site over it. It *seemed* to be holding up OK.
CPU never went up to 90%. But I noticed that several times I'd
get the fd=3 error.

Then within 2 hours of use, I get this error when external 
users try to access the site :

    Zope Error
    Zope has encountered an error while publishing this resource. 
    Error Type: NameError
    Error Value: name_param

Even from the administration interface, I can't access anything.
Everything returns :

    Zope Error
    Zope has encountered an error while publishing this resource. 
    Error Type: NameError
    Error Value: type

And now CPU is at 0% - probably because nobody's any longer 
accessing our site :(



So, again I had to restart Zope and then the site returned to
normal.  In a few hours, I'm going to have to (a) leave the 
computer and (b) sleep... and I'll be unable to do this manual
monitoring/restarting of the server. So, I'm quite  desperate to 
seek a solution to this soon.

To this end, does anybody have any ideas :
1) where to get better debugging information to help identify the 
   source of the problem.
2) better yet, any idea what the problem(s) could be ?


Configuration :
---------------
- FreeBSD 3.2 
- Zope 2.1 running behind Apache
- MySQL database using ZMySQLDA
- 40,000 dynamic pageviews per day though it'll be 
  about zero now, after 24 hours of downtime.


z2.py :
-------
## General configuration options
IP_ADDRESS='xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx' (I'd rather not say whilst my server's buggered)
DNS_IP=''
UID='nobody'
LOG_FILE='Z2.log'
HTTP_PORT=8080
HTTP_ENV={}
FTP_PORT=8021
PCGI_FILE='Zope.cgi'
MONITOR_PORT=8099
MODULE='Zope'
NUMBER_OF_THREADS=16
LOCALE_ID=None
FCGI_PORT=None


Zope.cgi is unchanged since installation.


chas