[Koha] MySQL using 99% CPU and making web site slow to a crawl

[Greg Vickers]

Hi all,

Over the last few days that the web side of our Koha installation has 
been slowing to a crawl. It usually happens in the afternoon (our time) 
and has only been happening since librarians from interstate have been 
making entries for their libraries. So it could be related to something 
they are doing, or an entry they have made, I'm waiting for them to get 
back to me on what they were doing on Koha when the system slowed down.

I logged on when this happened yesterday noticed that MySQL is using 99% 
of the CPU time. I scheduled a time last night to restart MySQL and 
Apache and when I logged back on Koha was running fine and MySQL was not 
using up 99% CPU time. I restarted MySQL and Apache and Koha is behaving 
normally.

I don't know what to do to investigate MySQL to find out why it is using 
up so much CPU time, or if there is some abnormal data entered in the 
Koha web site that causes MySQL to do this. Can anyone give me some tips 
or pointers on what to do?

Thanks,
Greg

p.s. this Debian host has been up for almost 200 days and is fully patched