Date: Fri, 3 Apr 1998 12:39:25 +0100 From: Philip Crewdson <philip@state51.co.uk> To: Andrew Heath <drew@bluetongue.com.au> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Memory Leak??? Apache, CGI, can't spawn child process Message-ID: <l03010d01b14a730b947b@[194.159.145.12]> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSF.3.96.980403195217.1028A-400000@skink.bluetongue.com>
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>We run a webserver which supports about 50 clients, and uses alot of CGI >developed scripts as a back end. > >The server seems to have some sort of memory leak, and I cannot for the >life of me plug it. Your problem sounds very similar to one we had which turned out to be a cluster of configuration options not getting on very well with each other. There's some excellent guidance on tuning a FreeBSD system for better web server performance at http://www.apache.org/docs/misc/perf-bsd44.html We found that tuning the kernel with the options specified really helped, particularly setting maxusers to 256 But that didn't solve things completely. The real nub of the problem was that requests through CGI were stacking up trying to talk to the Msql server, and a bit of delay in the db's response caused impatient users to click again. The processes would wait until they'd got their stuff from the db, then try to chuck it back at a closed socket. We did 2 things which completely sorted the situation. We optimised the database (the developers hadn't indexed a single field on a busy public registration service!!!), getting a faster response and fewer multiple clicks. And we looked at /etc/login.conf and I believe we changed something there, though I wasn't party to that conversation. The clue was that Apache was happy spawning httpd child processes, but those children couldn't spawn their own children for CGI. Someone else on this list should be able to clarify this. Paul/Philip ============= Philip Crewdson philip@state51.co.uk a member of the state51 conspiracy http://www.state51.co.uk/ raft crew http://www.vmg.co.uk/ To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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