Hi all,
from about a month the server reaches very high peaks of load average (between 3 and 7).
To see what is the problem, I restarted the mysql and apache services (today at 4am that is the hour with less users online). After i have restrated these services the server overload was down from 5.5 to 2 but after 10 seconds it returned again to the peaks from 3 and 7. During this period, no user was connected to the portal and no query was executed. Smarty is also used and the cache allows a drastic reduction of the query executed.
I do not know if is possible any rpm can be entered into conflict with apache or mysql. The strange thing is that the peak is also in the absence of queries or connection.
From yesterday often mysql refuse connection (unable to connect).

Process Manager:
pid user Priority CPU Memory
3172 mysql 0 100% 4.5

the cpu usage is 100% but can reach peaks of 130 or 160%
the most queries are select and update and always mysql lock the table (MyISAM) to complete the transaction (update statement). I do not know if this can the problem of mysql.

Todays CPU Usage
User Domain %CPU % MEM MySQL Processes
mysql 89.54 3.48 0.0

It is low after mysql restart but in the past days the cpu usage was 160%.
Can anyone help me?
Excuse me for my english:)

Greetings:

You probably need to tune your mySQL /etc/my.cnf settings.

See http://www.day32.com/MySQL/ for the "MySQL Performance Tuning Primer Script" script which can be very helpful.

http://wiki.mysqltuner.com/MySQLTuner is another alternative.

Please note mysql needs to be restarted after any changes to /etc/my.cnf -- both scripts also need mysql up for two days (48 hours) in order to be effective.

Thank you.