Script to restart server if load increases above a given limit

Updated on : May 13, 2018 Category : Advanced

Here is the script to restart a server automatically if it’s load increases above a limit :

#!/usr/bin/ bash
LOAD=`uptime |awk '{print $NF}'`
LOADCOMP=`echo $LOAD \> 10 |bc -l`
if [ $LOADCOMP -eq 1 ]
then /sbin/shutdown -r 0
fi

Note : Here 10 defines the server load, you can adjust as per your need.

  • Write this code in a file (eg. nano restartscript.sh) and paste the code.
  • The file should have extension .sh. After saving the script, make it executable by running the following command :

chmod 777 restartscript.sh

  • Now we need to add this script to cron which will run every 2 minutes
  • Type crontab -e to open the cron input file.
  • Enter the following code to run the script we just created

*/2 * * * * cd /path/to/file && sh ./restartscript.sh > /var/log/cronlogfile.log 2>&1

Note : You need to replace /path/to/file with the path directory you have saved the file.

To check if cron is added succesfully run crontab -l to list all the crons.

Now, whenever the specific server load will go beyond the given limit (i.e 10 in our case), the server / VPS will reboot.
Though this is a temporary solution if you are facing sudden/abnormal spikes in your server and restarting fixes the same. On a longer run, you need to debug the same and resolve the main issue which causes the load spike.

This tutorial is helpful for VPS in openVZ environment where any particular VPS might be bringing down the main node from abnormal high load on it.