Error 522 - Server overloaded? How to troubleshoot?

Question

My site has been crashing recently displaying Error 522 (I use Cloudflare), and it looks like it is the result of a server overload (I have a VPS with GoDaddy). I tried to dig around and found the following lines in Apache's log:

Script timed out before returning headers: index.php, referer: http://www.777auction.ca/online/index.php?module=listings&controller=browse&action=index&show=all&limit=80&sort=ending_asc&listing_type=auction

This line error appears almost every minute for the duration of my auction. If my site showed error 522 due to server overload, does that error mean the cause of the crash was when this specific page was viewed by users?

I whitelisted Cloudflare's IPs on WHM. How can I pinpoint the cause of the error and prevent it from happening again?

Thank you

Answer 1

As suggested, maybe it's DDoS in which case you could try changing your CloudFlare security settings to high or I'm under attack.

It seems to me though that it would be good to gather more information first, because maybe this isn't the cause. For example maybe you need to up the size of your server, or maybe you need to fine-tune your php or mysql settings, or up the php max_execution_time

One place to start gathering more info would be by installing htop and then watch what happens to your memory and cpu, and which tasks are using your server resources.

Htop won't necessarily solve your problem but it will hopefully point you in the right direction.

Good luck!