Restarting webserver regularly - necessary?
Our site (on iPlanet Webserver, NT) goes down inexplicably after either a few weeks or days of operation. A friend, and former webmaster, wrote me a script that restarts the webserver every day. He claims this "clears" the webserver (as the webserver has a tendency to leak memory) and helps prevent problems. Does this make sense? What's the logic behind this? Do webmasters regularly restart the webserver as a matter of practice?
I will try this remedy but I need to justify it to management.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks!
Ted S posted this at 00:38 — 21st November 2000.
They have: 92 posts
Joined: May 1999
Welcome to the wonderful world of NT. ALthough nt server is 100s of tiems better than windows 95/98/ME series, it is still windows. One of the most annoying parts of all windows systems is the inability to return ram.
That is, when someone finishes runing a program that uses 16megs of memory, windows nt might return 15 megs (probably less) to your system. That means after hundreds of uses, you run low on ram.
And this folks is why people use linux. Although it lacks the friendly windows feel (hah), closing a program actually closes a program. So when someone uses 16megs of ram, linux will return around 15.999 megs of ram. Of coruse linux can have the same problem from zombies (processes that dont clolse).
Pretty much, if you get high load to lots of applications, you'll need a real hearty box to keep from rebooting often. Still, a dialy reboot sounds like your box is getting pushed pretty hard -- it might be time to look at just what it is doing right and what's killing it.
Ted S
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