[squid-users] Long running squid proxy slows way down

All,

    I am looking for ideas on ways to avoid this, as the tuning guides I
have found lead me all over the place. What I am seeing is over time the
cache starts to slow down from being lightning fast to being ok, to it
taking 1-3 minutes to decide to load, and I know it is tunable on this
side. Usually this is fixed by a restart of squid, and everything is
happy for a variable time frame. I have a tiny user base (on average 2
people) since this is on a home system.

What I have:

Squid Cache: Version 2.6.STABLE22
configure options: '--build=i386-redhat-linux-gnu'
'--host=i386-redhat-linux-gnu' '--target=i386-redhat-linux-gnu'
'--program-prefix=' '--prefix=/usr' '--exec-prefix=/usr'
'--bindir=/usr/bin' '--sbindir=/usr/sbin' '--sysconfdir=/etc'
'--includedir=/usr/include' '--libdir=/usr/lib'
'--libexecdir=/usr/libexec' '--sharedstatedir=/usr/com'
'--mandir=/usr/share/man' '--infodir=/usr/share/info'
'--exec_prefix=/usr' '--bindir=/usr/sbin' '--libexecdir=/usr/lib/squid'
'--localstatedir=/var' '--datadir=/usr/share' '--sysconfdir=/etc/squid'
'--enable-epoll' '--enable-snmp' '--enable-removal-policies=heap,lru'
'--enable-storeio=aufs,coss,diskd,null,ufs' '--enable-ssl'
'--with-openssl=/usr/kerberos' '--enable-delay-pools'
'--enable-linux-netfilter' '--with-pthreads'
'--enable-ntlm-auth-helpers=SMB,fakeauth'
'--enable-external-acl-helpers=ip_user,ldap_group,unix_group,wbinfo_group'
'--enable-auth=basic,digest,ntlm,negotiate'
'--enable-digest-auth-helpers=password' '--with-winbind-auth-challenge'
'--enable-useragent-log' '--enable-referer-log'
'--disable-dependency-tracking' '--enable-cachemgr-hostname=localhost'
'--enable-underscores'
'--enable-basic-auth-helpers=LDAP,MSNT,NCSA,PAM,SMB,YP,getpwnam,multi-domain-NTLM,SASL'
'--enable-cache-digests' '--enable-ident-lookups'
'--enable-negotiate-auth-helpers=squid_kerb_auth' '--with-large-files'
'--enable-follow-x-forwarded-for' '--enable-wccpv2' '--with-maxfd=16384'
'--enable-arp-acl' 'build_alias=i386-redhat-linux-gnu'
'host_alias=i386-redhat-linux-gnu' 'target_alias=i386-redhat-linux-gnu'
'CFLAGS=-fPIE -Os -g -pipe -fsigned-char -O2 -g -pipe -Wall
-Wp,-D_FORTIFY_SOURCE=2 -fexceptions -fstack-protector
--param=ssp-buffer-size=4 -m32 -march=i386 -mtune=generic
-fasynchronous-unwind-tables' 'LDFLAGS=-pie'

Hardware:
2x 2.0 Ghz Xeon
2.0 GB RAM
3ware SATA RAID, Raid 5 across 4 discs.
Fedora 9, ext3 filesystem

config items:

ipcache_size 4096
ipcache_low 90
# ipcache_high 95
ipcache_high 95
cache_mem 1024 MB
# cache_swap_low 90
cache_swap_low 90
# cache_swap_high 95
cache_swap_high 95
cache_dir diskd /var/spool/squid 40960 93 256 Q1=72 Q2=64
memory_pools_limit 150 MB
store_avg_object_size 70 KB
store_objects_per_bucket 60
digest_swapout_chunk_size 202907 bytes
refresh_pattern ^ftp: 1440 20% 10080
refresh_pattern ^gopher: 1440 0% 1440
refresh_pattern . 0 20% 4320
request_body_max_size 7 MB
memory_replacement_policy heap LFUDA

I also have a redirector in place, squidGuard, and set to use 15 child
processes to attempt to speed up that section a little more to some
degree of success.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance,
~Seann