[CentOS] Apache2 crashes, MySQL uses upto 90% CPU

Hi everyone,

I am running CentOS 4.6 and use the centosplus repo. Apache version 2.0.59 and MySQL 5.0.54 and for the past few days Apache 2 has been crashing randomly. The CPU usage has been maxing out (The machine has 2 x Xeon processors, with 4Gb RAM) and there are many httpd processes that appear to be defunct.

I read around and found that logrotate may be crashing Apache if it doesn't quit in time. I have performance tuned MySQL to cache queries, modified php.ini not to use too many persistent connections, restricted the number of connections that Apache will answer to.

Top says: 8136 mysql 16 0 202 51:55.73 5.7 680m 225m 5352 S mysqld

Is there anyone else experiencing similar things? Any suggestions?

Thanks for your time.