Ok here is the deal. We have been having problems yesteray and today with the server. First off, we just run some basic sites. Secondly we have the psadump backup script run in the cron.daily. I get on like I do everyday around 6am est, which is roughly right after the dump finishes so I can download the backup. Well yesterday it seemed fine, but I never checked on the dump or its file, however around 9am, things get a little dicey.... can't connect to the SQL database most of the time, top was showing anywhere from 0 to 8 appache process running by perl??? Of course when I found that the server was having problems, I reboot it around 3pm est. When I checked on the backup file, it was only 25% of what it should be and the date was at 3pm est, not 5am!!! What the heck! So we started looking at the appache log and saw some unusual things in. Then in addition, today it was the same way!!!!! Almost exact chain of events!

So anyway, back to when I ran top. I am seeing up to a dozen apache processes spawn by perl peridocially each taking 0% to 17%!!! Then there is other apache spawns by httpd, but those are all 0.1%. So I think that these processes are keeping the dump from running right, hence why it seems like our backup is stalling and taking half the day and killing the server.

The point is what is causing these processes, and what does the following log tell you???

I appreciate your help!!!!


Frank


EDIT: We had been hacked thru an exploit. EV1 Helped out awesomely! Thanks!