Apache zombie process problems.

The Apache server is being a dick. It keeps dying with unkillable zombie processes; these don't serve data, but they do keep their hold on port 80. The only workaround is to reboot the server. This is, of course, ridiculous. I've put a ticket in with Linode. Anyone got ideas? It's just the standard Ubuntu apache2 package.

Update: Apache was causing kernel oopses. (Things that make you go "wtf.") Linode suggest using kernel 3.9-linode instead of 2.6-linode (the default for Ubuntu 10.04, which our box runs on). We'll see how that goes next reboot. Might even fix the white-screening blog too.

Wiki slow, we're being hammered.

The wiki has been really slow all day. The Apache server and the Squids appear quite happy with life - but the load balancer is reporting huge traffic spikes. More information as I have it.

(The blogs are unaffected, as they're served directly from the Apache server.)

Update: Here's the load balancer connections per second. (The gaps are when logging is killed to increase throughput or something.) Note the bit where we go from a few tens of queries a second up to 800 a second.