OK everything has been fine for ages now.

However today my server loads have been rocketing.

running a ps aux I see multiple instances of mysql and httpd running huge cpu loads, terminate the processes, loads drop, start and loads rise.

Any ideas to track exactly what's going on?

Update... I think I may have the httpd problem solved now.

I offer an open directory script and I've got google bot indexing every file of the open directory at the moment! 9Mb log file today from just google bot.

Still doesn't solve the mysql problem though.

Do you host forums or other intenssive applications on your server?

There is a client who has a php/mysql photo gallery script (around 2000 visitors a day). But they've had that for about a year and no noticable problems before.

Yet today the load is back down to 0.11

Google definately accounted for httpd problems but that script they were accessing doesn't use mysql, because once the googlebot left the site the loads fell (although to around 4 rather than 11)

You could always block Googlebot with robots.tx from spidering your open directory mirror.

I don't really want to block them more indexing thus more traffic thus more possibilty to sell things