I contacted dreamhost about it and have a theory, party based on one of their tech support responses to me about the issue:

"did some more investigating and it appears quite a few of your processes are being killed by procwatch. What this means that there are processes your site is using that are going over specific limits. We kill(stop) the process before they crash the server.

"From what I saw your user(salvemaria) was over the memory limit. Your user\'s combined set of processes were over the memory limit and some processes were killed right away. This is the reason you are getting internal server error messages.

"Another option would be to upgrade to a Dreamhost PS: http://dreamhostps.com

We do not install procwatch on the private server, so you are free to run your scripts (granted you give the PS enough memory!).

So my theory is that the memory levels on dreamhosts regular servers might be set strategically low in order to push people towards getting the more lucrative private servers, to avoid this issue.

My Joomla site doesn\'t have much traffic, perhaps about 30 people a day, no more than 8 at a time (max). But it does have a Kunena Forum, Community Builder Component and a ton of other components and JoomlaWatch, etc., that may be automatically running a lot of code, but still this wouldn\'t explain why things are fine for weeks and then all of a sudden are HELL for several days.

By the way, dreamhost support is EXCELLENT, they get back to you fast and are very knowledgeable. I would recommended there services is it weren\'t for this INTERNAL SERVER ERROR thing that keeps popping up... and I don\'t know if other hosts would be any better.

Cheers!

i get this error suddenly. It all worked fine till yesterday. pls help.

What i like with dreamhost PS is that they take care about everything.

Can you advice me any dedicated server easy to use for someone who knows nothing about servers ?

I want somebody to repair when it breaks, is there any company selling dedicated servers with a support as reliable as dreamhost one? (at least they reply fast!)

I want to move because my websites are not optimized and even set up at 4000 MB my websites show thousand of errors pages everyday, so better get 8GB dedicated for the same price as dreamhost 4GB PS !

Thanks for your help.