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What Digg does to Servers [1016% Server Load!]

vgpro.com — This is a screenshot of the output from running the Top command on my CentOS box before it completely crashed due to the traffic from an article that made it to the homepage. The httpd.conf file had been misconfigured and was allowing far too many apache processes to spawn which ate up all the memory so the box switched to Swap memory (kswapd).

Who dugg this? Made popular May 28, 2008

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  • chaos386, on 05/28/2008, -7/+449That's not 1016% load, it's 101600% (!!) divided by the number of cores in the system. In other words, the server needed to be 1016 times faster in order to cope with the load it was getting.
  • AhrenBa, on 05/28/2008, -17/+316Hmm....how ironic....four diggs and this site is already not responding...
  • Testies, on 05/28/2008, -7/+225WE NEED MORE COAL!!!!!!!!!
  • AnotherThought, on 05/28/2008, -9/+218digg effect FTW
  • tmoney578, on 05/28/2008, -16/+189it's OVER 9000!!!!
  • elislider, on 05/28/2008, -6/+149WE REQUIRE MORE VESPENE GAS
  • JlmAWP, on 05/28/2008, -5/+106So, rape, basically.
  • msamjr, on 05/28/2008, -3/+104The Digg Effect: Now with 80% more irony
  • svensksvamp, on 05/28/2008, -3/+92Mirror: http://img519.imageshack.us/img519/7457/97248c0ca8 ...
  • clondike7, on 05/28/2008, -6/+95Killed by irony overload.
  • rockrodger, on 05/28/2008, -10/+98I love you digg
  • DCLXVI, on 05/28/2008, -4/+72The load average has nothing to do with percentages.

    that number 1016 is the sum of the run queue and and the number of jobs currently running, on average over the last 1 minute.

    In this case it basically means that apache has a lot of jobs queued up it can't handle at that given moment.
  • reggplant, on 05/28/2008, -3/+52Server load is basically the number of processes waiting to access the process. I'm surprised the server managed to maintain such a load!
  • DrVanilla, on 05/28/2008, -1/+48And digg wasn't even kind enough to give it a reach around.

    Terrible.
  • BoneheadFarker, on 05/28/2008, -3/+44With a bit of flogging thrown in for good measure.
  • follower64, on 05/28/2008, -4/+45Everyone is this thread just got dumber.
  • Bluemotion, on 05/28/2008, -7/+42Down!
    IRONY... anyone.

    or was it always dead, and i'm missing the point?
  • dajuggernaut, on 05/28/2008, -1/+35forget the coal, the hamster is having a heart attack.
  • frostbyt, on 05/28/2008, -2/+34***** YOUR PYLONS! WE NEEDS MORE OVERLORDS.

    countdown to starcraft 2
  • dabdinoor, on 05/28/2008, -5/+37Now this site has crashed, oh irony.
  • Ocelot13, on 05/28/2008, -2/+34to protect yoursekf from digg... here are some simple steps
    1.) Dont host lolcat pictures
    2.) Dont host Obama articles
    That should be about it, follow those to keep your server safe
  • adamward1985, on 05/28/2008, -3/+33A quick word about load averages: http://adamstechblog.com/2007/12/04/load-average-e ...
  • arjie, on 05/28/2008, -3/+31It is, bread sliced under 1016% load is awful
  • frostbyt, on 05/28/2008, -1/+29Build more farms.
  • nullx42, on 05/28/2008, -1/+27Weird how digg never suffers from he digg effect..
  • tachistoscope, on 05/28/2008, -4/+28This baby can take temperatures up to 9000 degrees.
  • borez, on 05/28/2008, -7/+30 David Lightman: People sometimes make mistakes.
    Joshua: Yes, they do.
  • CarStan, on 05/28/2008, -0/+22It's Goatse in Linux.
  • iRelinquish, on 05/28/2008, -0/+20http://img86.imageshack.us/img86/1474/baracklolcat ...
    Image Shack was asking for it!
  • redwallhp, on 05/28/2008, -0/+20What if Digg was Stumbled, Reddited, and covered on CNN at the same time...?
  • tunafizzle, on 05/28/2008, -3/+23Used the broomstick too. Thats never pleasant in the anus.
  • twiztidsinz, on 05/28/2008, -1/+20well either way you're wrong... its 1016.02 or 101602 which means that it IS showing down to 1% (or 0.01% depending on the numbers you use).
    And I do think that computers are accurate enough to determine 0.01%
  • noseeme, on 05/28/2008, -0/+17So for us UNIX geeks, that means the load average was 1016.0. :)
  • noseeme, on 05/28/2008, -6/+23***** YOUR VESPENE GAS, WE MUST CONSTRUCT ADDITIONAL PYLONS!!!
    /cruisecontrol
  • inactive, on 05/28/2008, -0/+16That's what… she said?
  • HonoredMule, on 05/28/2008, -0/+16Time to invest in a broomstick less prone to splintering.
  • MaxisReed, on 05/28/2008, -0/+15EN TARO ADUN, EXECUTOR.
  • 30thElement, on 05/28/2008, -1/+16If people are going to a site through digg, then the number of page loads on digg and on the other site are (roughly) equal. The reason digg doesn't succumb to the digg effect is because they know they are going to get a lot of traffic and so have spent a lot of money on servers and bandwidth. Digg has rooms of servers, many of the sites on digg are just shared hosting, many sites on less servers.
  • 333cale, on 05/28/2008, -3/+17not really

    the severs load up because there is a sudden rush of processes waiting to access the load, all within a confined time period (i.e. when the digg gets made popular)

    Whereas Digg.com has an even capacity of processes and there is no cause for a sudden rush of visitors to the server. So Digg can always handle the smooth amount of traffic without crashing.
  • SteveMax, on 05/28/2008, -0/+13Thank you. The comments above were destroying my faith in geekkind.
  • senorcool, on 05/28/2008, -2/+14Are you suggesting we overload YouTube's servers or are you just posting an irrelevant, mediocre video?
  • coder_cotton, on 05/28/2008, -1/+13Actually, it's the load average, not CPU utilization. It is the average amount of processes waiting for CPU time at certain intervals (last minute, last 5 min, last 15 min IIRC). That being said, a 1016 load avg is... bad.
  • kidcodea, on 05/28/2008, -10/+22its linux shouldnt it be better than sliced bread?
  • ifonly, on 05/28/2008, -8/+20Server load figures are a completely inaccurate way to judge the performance of a system; you can have a load as high as 200 and not see any issues with performance, e.g. non I/O intensive applications, and not to mention this figure needs to be divided by the number of cores on the system.
  • asskicker32, on 05/28/2008, -3/+14god forbid someone chekc the upcoming section...
  • ribo, on 05/28/2008, -1/+12ITT: people who don't understand system load. lrn2unix
  • daok, on 05/28/2008, -0/+11Your website learn me something more than the principal article over here. Nice job
  • Tryptomine, on 05/28/2008, -0/+10"Shovel on more dogs, would you?"

    "Aye, more dogs!"
  • DrVanilla, on 05/28/2008, -2/+12*watches it as it melts and 9001*

    MUWHAHAHAHA, I feel like Dilbert.
  • rdoger6424, on 05/28/2008, -1/+11LOLBAMA!
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