load0626: very heavy load on 06/26, before any tuning. graph is number of mysqld processes in 15 second intervals, from early in the evening until around 6 am the next morning load0627: first tuning efforts: optimize table load0628-9: two days, 500-1000 is day of 29th, 2000 is around 11am on the 30th; also shows both mysqld (red) and httpsd (green) counts. The high red count early in the graph is where for a short time I set the max connections for mysqld to 150 -- the system quickly overloaded. I modified several of the tuning parameters, and it ran overnight with those new values. The graph is too compressed (didn't have time to prettify it), but the tuning actually did help (presuming the load was relatively constant). The morning of the 29th I changed the "join" script to not contact mysql if the load got over 48; that didn't actually kick in until the following evening. Today I added another index to the database -- the only index previously defined was on the "membernumber" field -- but of course that is the most heavily used. The join script does a select on a field called "matchname"; I created an index for that...