/bin/php-cgi uses too much CPU

Howdy -- usually that means some component of your web application requires a lot of CPU, for some reason.

You may need to look into the web application that is being used, and the plugins it is running, to determine the cause of the high CPU usage.

However, some additional things you could look into --

You could always try switching the PHP Execution Mode to CGI to see if the same problem continues to occur. You can do that in Server Configuration -> Website Options.

Another option is to go into Administrative Options -> Edit Resource Limits. There, you can set per-process limits on CPU usage. You'd need to be careful there though, as any process going over that limit will be killed

Great, let us know if that helps!

Well, we're unfortunately not familiar with your website or the plugins it's using, so we don't really know why it's using a lot of CPU.

You could always use the CPU restriction mentioned above, the one in Administrative Options -> Edit Resource Limits.

Another option is to review your Apache logs in $HOME/logs/access_log to determine what users are accessing. You could then do testing to determine why the parts of the site they're accessing are requiring so much CPU.

You could also try disabling plugins, to see if one or more of the plugins you're using is causing the problem.

Just to rule a couple of unrelated things out, what is the output of these two commands:

Ah, you're right, it doesn't allow you to restrict CPU percent, it's only CPU time (in seconds).

We're not able to determine the cause of the issue by looking at your Apache logs, that's only something your website's developer would be able to review and determine.

However, I can offer that the output of the "netstat" command you ran shows that one particular IP address has 1632 open connections to your server.

If you see any IP addresses with a high number of connections to your server more than a few hundred), you may want to consider blocking that IP address. It's possible that your site is experiencing a DoS from that IP address.

Glad you were able to block that IP! The first step is to verify that it is indeed blocked, and that no other IP addresses are hitting your server.

If you run the netstat command above again, what output do you receive now? Do all the IP addresses it shows have less than a hundred connections or so?

Yes, your netstat command does look good.

Okay, it sounds like you may be seeing a PHP/website issue then.

Unfortunately, we're not able to say why the PHP code being run is requiring a lot of CPU. You may need to work with a web developer to determine what Joomla is doing that's so CPU intensive.

You could try disabling Joomla plugins to see if that helps.

But ultimately you may need to work with a web developer to determine the cause of this issue.

What is the load average you are seeing when this occurs? You can determine that by running the "uptime" command.

This may mean that your server doesn't have enough resources for the sites currently running on them.

You may want to try disabling any Joomla plugins that you don't require in the sites that you're having problems with.

Sometimes plugins can cause unusual problems.

You may also want to look into Joomla caching tools. There are a number of Joomla caching plugins out there that may be able to assist in the problem you're seeing.