[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.



-- 
"I never look back darling, it distracts from the now", Edna Mode (The
Incredibles)