tracing the cause of a random high server load?

yesterday my server load went up to 90, the average is usually around 1. also my processes went up to 500, the average is usually 80. how can if figure out what was going on when that happened (what all those processes were)? my visitor and pages viewed numbers were average for the day.

this is my log file...

Dec 2 10:00:09 server1 thttpd[3322]: up 439200 seconds, stats for 3600 seconds:
Dec 2 10:00:09 server1 thttpd[3322]: thttpd - 1647 connections (0.4575/sec), 8 max simultaneous, 13755448 bytes (3820.96/sec), 17 httpd_conns allocated
Dec 2 10:00:09 server1 thttpd[3322]: libhttpd - 228 strings allocated, 101906 bytes (446.956 bytes/str)
Dec 2 10:00:09 server1 thttpd[3322]: map cache - 50 allocated, 49 active (485802 bytes), 1 free; hash size: 1024; expire age: 1800
Dec 2 10:00:09 server1 thttpd[3322]: fdwatch - 7495 polls (2.08194/sec)
Dec 2 10:00:09 server1 thttpd[3322]: timers - 3 allocated, 3 active, 0 free
Dec 2 10:19:02 server1 thttpd[3322]: 81.xxx.104.23 URL "/" tried to index a directory
Dec 2 10:50:29 server1 thttpd[3322]: 137.xxx.250.100 connection timed out sending
Dec 2 10:50:29 server1 last message repeated 2 times
Dec 2 11:00:04 server1 thttpd[3322]: 142.xxx.173.93 connection timed out reading


it seems that the spike occurred around this time "Dec 2 10:19:02 server1 thttpd[3322]: 81.xxx.104.23 URL "/" tried to index a directory"

so i wonder if that was the problem, and why it was a problem.

 

 

 

 

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