Sounds like some query is abusing mysql. I'm not a mysql expert, but logging in as root, running the mysql client from the command line and looking at the output of show processlist and show status may be helpful.
I'm not running any of the proxies (except DNS and NTP).
On my machine running 7.004 with 54 days of uptime, MySQL was using 291M VSZ and 165M RSS!
This was causing some swapping.
The strange thing is the /var/storage/mysql/ directory is only 29MB, so I don't see what it could possibly be caching,
UNLESS lots of temporary tables are being created by Astaro and not being freed.
I've upgraded to 7.005 and upgraded my RAM to 512MB, and followed William's suggestion of changing the kernel swappiness value, so we'll see how it goes.
I haven't edited the my.cnf yet.
# Don't listen on a TCP/IP port at all. This can be a security enhancement,
# if all processes that need to connect to mysqld run on the same host.
# All interaction with mysqld must be made via Unix sockets or named pipes.
# Note that using this option without enabling named pipes on Windows
# (via the "enable-named-pipe" option) will render mysqld useless!
#
#skip-networking
# Replication Master Server (default)
# binary logging is required for replication
# log-bin=mysql-bin
# required unique id between 1 and 2^32 - 1
# defaults to 1 if master-host is not set
# but will not function as a master if omitted
#server-id = 1
# Replication Slave (comment out master section to use this)
#
# To configure this host as a replication slave, you can choose between
# two methods :
#
# 1) Use the CHANGE MASTER TO command (fully described in our manual) -
# the syntax is:
#
# CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST=, MASTER_PORT=,
# MASTER_USER=, MASTER_PASSWORD= ;
#
# where you replace , , by quoted strings and
# by the master's port number (3306 by default).
#
# Example:
#
# CHANGE MASTER TO MASTER_HOST='125.564.12.1', MASTER_PORT=3306,
# MASTER_USER='joe', MASTER_PASSWORD='secret';
#
# OR
#
# 2) Set the variables below. However, in case you choose this method, then
# start replication for the first time (even unsuccessfully, for example
# if you mistyped the password in master-password and the slave fails to
# connect), the slave will create a master.info file, and any later
# change in this file to the variables' values below will be ignored and
# overridden by the content of the master.info file, unless you shutdown
# the slave server, delete master.info and restart the slaver server.
# For that reason, you may want to leave the lines below untouched
# (commented) and instead use CHANGE MASTER TO (see above)
#
# required unique id between 2 and 2^32 - 1
# (and different from the master)
# defaults to 2 if master-host is set
# but will not function as a slave if omitted
#server-id = 2
#
# The replication master for this slave - required
#master-host =
#
# The username the slave will use for authentication when connecting
# to the master - required
#master-user =
#
# The password the slave will authenticate with when connecting to
# the master - required
#master-password =
#
# The port the master is listening on.
# optional - defaults to 3306
#master-port =
#
# binary logging - not required for slaves, but recommended
#log-bin=mysql-bin
# Point the following paths to different dedicated disks
#tmpdir = /tmp/
#log-update = /path-to-dedicated-directory/hostname
# Uncomment the following if you are using BDB tables
#bdb_cache_size = 4M
#bdb_max_lock = 10000
# Uncomment the following if you are using InnoDB tables
#innodb_data_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
#innodb_data_file_path = ibdata1:10M:autoextend
#innodb_log_group_home_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
#innodb_log_arch_dir = /var/lib/mysql/
# You can set .._buffer_pool_size up to 50 - 80 %
# of RAM but beware of setting memory usage too high
#innodb_buffer_pool_size = 16M
#innodb_additional_mem_pool_size = 2M
# Set .._log_file_size to 25 % of buffer pool size
#innodb_log_file_size = 5M
#innodb_log_buffer_size = 8M
#innodb_flush_log_at_trx_commit = 1
#innodb_lock_wait_timeout = 50
