From: Dan Nelson
Date: July 12 2003 8:22pm
Subject: Re: Stopping MySQL taking down a server?
List-Archive: http://lists.mysql.com/mysql/145025
Message-Id: <20030712202237.GA23909@dan.emsphone.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii

In the last episode (Jul 12), Tim Fountain said:
> This may be a silly question but what can be done to stop
> load-intensive MySQL processes taking down a server? Things like
> adding fulltext indexes to very large tables, or selects on very
> large (multi-million-row) tables just completely kill the box until
> they complete.
> 
> I don't mind how long these things take but the box shouldn't become
> unresponsive while they are running.

Are you swapping?  Insufficient memory causing the OS to swap processes
out is the only thing I can think of that could cause this.  You
usually have to be *REALLY* low on memory (like a 512MB process on a
128MB RAM system) to cause total unresponsiveness, though.  Try adding
more RAM or limiting mysql's use of it by lowering buffer sizes in
my.cnf.

-- 
	Dan Nelson
	dnelson@stripped