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From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org>
Message-Id: <199706151850.LAA16701@phaeton.artisoft.com>
Subject: Re: help, running out of processes. :(
To: joe@pavilion.net (Josef Karthauser)
Date: Sun, 15 Jun 1997 11:50:57 -0700 (MST)
Cc: questions@FreeBSD.ORG, hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
In-Reply-To: <19970615140935.59168@pavilion.net> from "Josef Karthauser" at Jun 15, 97 02:09:35 pm
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> 
> Can someone please help me?  We've got a web machine thta is running out
> of processes to the extent the it can't spawn CGI scripts anymore.  This
> started happening when I upgraded from 2.1.7.1 to 2.2.2.
> 
> The web server runs under the a non-priv user called webboss.  We usually
> unlimit the number of processes and openfiles in a startup script that
> unlimits the shell before firing up 'httpd' (apache).
> 
> I've created a class called 'web' in /etc/login.conf with limits of 1000
> processes and 2000 files (we've got a USERS 128 in the kernel).  I've attached
> this class to the 'webboss' user in the passwd file.  We're still getting
> 'out of processes' errors for this user though.  When this last happened
> a 'ps -aux | grep ^webboss | wc' showed 150 processes running for webboss,
> and I couldn't 'su -m weboss' from root.
> 
> Does anybody know how login.conf works?  It's not clear to me from the
> manual whether it's values act globally, or only for users that have logged
> in?

login.conf only operates agains users whose credentials were generated
through a login process (quotas are assigned at the time credentials
are, when using login.conf).


> What can I do to fix this problem.  It's causing us major problems at
> the moment.

Most likely, you want to sysctl up "maxprocperuid", followed by
"maxproc" in a process before forking the process that forks the
server.  This is (effectively) what login.conf does when you
login.


					Terry Lambert
					terry@lambert.org
---
Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present
or previous employers.