It's running fine right now, but it looks like it got slow a little while ago.

It might have been a spam flood or something similar.

It might be trackback spam flood - I just hunted down one a few minutes ago.

I'm getting a lot of hits from Speculist right now, but not enough to slow the server down, only about 1 a minute, or so. However, I did notice the server was very slow a little while ago myself.

When we get a spam flood, it often happens that 50 or more blogs get hit all at once. That brings the server to a screeching halt.

What happens then is that Fluffy the Spamhound sniffs the scent, and leaps into action, disabling comments or trackbacks (depending on the type of spam) and killing all the incoming spam. Once the coast is clear, Fluffy enables the comments/trackbacks again.

It should only take a few minutes for this to happen, but while it's going on, the server can be really slow. If you see the server running slow for an extended period, do let me know.

Oh, and I am looking at ways to fix this. One way is Minx, another way is Movable Type 3, which handles this rather better, and yet another is moving from a single server to a small cluster.

The reason I asked is that I noticed it running really slow for about an hour. I figured if it was Fluffy, it would be shorter... but it was in and out, so maybe someone is playing fetch with Fluffy tonight....