Ghost DigitalOcean Droplet keeps crashing and returning 502/504s

Developer help Installation
1

Hi,

I’m trying to deploy a simple blog using Ghost as it was recommended to me, I’ve added one page and one post, yet twice already the droplet deployed using DigitalOcean has crashed with me having to turn off and then reboot. This was pretty embarrassing as I had just tried to share my new site to be told it wasn’t working. :slightly_frowning_face:

I’m using Ghost 4.13, with the free edition theme. My site is https://donna.dev

Droplet: Basic, 1GB Memory, 25 GB Disk, FRA1 - Ubuntu 20.04

I keep getting spikes in CPU (105% user when I was away from my machine) and I/O spikes with just myself using it which doesn’t feel right.

My partner has been using Ghost for his site for a few weeks now with many more photos, posts and users with no issues at all.

I’ve tried setting up a swap file in the hopes that works but I’m hoping someone else might be able to help too.

2

Seems to be working when I visit the domain along with your initial post.

3

Thanks Rajesh.

I’ve rebooted it twice within the first 12 hours because it kept crashing from CPU spikes.

I’m glad it’s up right now, but I’m concerned it’s going to happen again or why it would happen in the first place.

4

I’m using a small (1GB Memory, 25GB Disk LON1) droplet to host an instance of Peertube. It’s runs with occasional spikes over 4% - and thats for video. Could be worthwhile to ask D/O if the FRA location makes a difference than say LON1?

Screenshot 2021-09-13 at 13.17.28
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5

When I say spikes, I mean it spiked at about 120% CPU and completely crashed the droplet :exploding_head:

I’ll maybe try LON1 and see if that does make a difference. So far my site is still up after making the changes with the swap file.

6

I’ve seen other people mention CPU spikes and crashes on this forum but I haven’t yet encountered it with any of my Ghost sites on DigitalOcean.

Did you use the official “1-Click” Ghost app on DigitalOcean’s marketplace for your installation?

7

Yep! I followed the “How t install Ghost on DigitalOcean” guide: How to install Ghost on Digital Ocean - Official guide

Since following this guide on DigitalOcean to set up a swap file it’s been almost 24 hours since it last crashed: How To Add Swap Space on Ubuntu 20.04 | DigitalOcean

So I’m hoping this resolves it for me. I’ll update this forum if anything else comes up (or if that continues to work)

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8

Adding swap is a temporary solution. The moment there’s a little traffic spike on the blog, the swap is also rendered useless. I have been requesting the official team to look into this over a large part of the forum where these type of crashes are mentioned but no solution so far.

9

Hi,

I am also experiencing the same thing on droplet. CPU spike over 100% crashes the instances so I only get 502 bad gateway. I have to restart ghost every day or so. Makes it unusable really. Any one solve this problem?

10

Adding 1GB of swap space solved the problem for me. I did that around six months ago and haven’t had a crash since then.

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11

Thanks for the tip. I had the same issue, so I just added 1GB swap thanks to this tip. Hope it fixes things.

@donna-156 Did/do you have a way to monitor the site to know if it’s gone down?

12

Thanks for this thread adding swap was a droplet saver and money saver. wrote about it on my blog for future reference. You can read the article here thanks.

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