Dell continues to suck - Load Averages

I just got hit with enough attempts to post spam comments that the load average of the server hit 50+ and this caused the server to crash. This is not because Linux can't handle the load - it's mainly down to the slower disk interface and smaller memory in this Dell 220. It only has ATA-66 and 512 MB Ram. The smaller RAM means that it has to page in and out of memory more often, and the slower disks means that doing that takes longer.

The older motherboard had ATA-100 (33% faster) and 50% more RAM and easily stood up to the tens of thousands of hits per day I had during SARS. I think I'll have to rescue that motherboard from the slag heap and move the web server back over.

When I saw the load averages, I thought I'd been slashdotted, but apparently it was just the fault of comment spammers attempting to post 100 comments at once on this blog. Spammers are scum.

This is, by the way, the first time I have ever seen a Linux box crash due to load in the 7 years that I've been using the OS.