<b>Your cron job is running 4 copies of itself right now</b>

<b>Your cron job is running 4 copies of itself right now</b>

That <code>*/5</code> job that pulls feeds? If it ever takes longer than 5 min, cron fires another while the first is still chewing. Now you've got overlapping processes eating RAM until the box falls over. Wrap it in flock:

— <code>*/5 * * * * flock -n /tmp/feeds.lock php /var/www/pull.php</code>

<code>-n</code> means: if the lock's held, just skip this run, don't queue. One running copy, ever. This single fix has saved more $5 boxes than any RAM upgrade. Try it tonight.