6 Aug
2010
6 Aug
'10
2:14 p.m.
Hello there guys,
There appears to be a bug in the current version of PHP that affects my
wordpress pages. When i am in the admincp for WordPress, Apache2 can go
crazy and eat up all of server resources meaning that I have to destroy the
server instance from Xen. Does anyone know why this happens, or if there is
a workaround/resolution for it?
The first time it happened i wasn't aware of it, and Google threw one of
from the search rankings...
Daniel
6 Aug
6 Aug
2:20 p.m.
Hi Daniel,
On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 03:14:24PM +0100, Daniel Case wrote:
Hello there guys,
There appears to be a bug in the current version of PHP that affects my
wordpress pages.
It might be useful to say what Linux distribution you're using, and
what versions of apache, php and wordpress are in ue.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
2:25 p.m.
Does anyone know why this happens, or if there is a
workaround/resolution for it?
Is it Ubuntu 8.04?
I had horrible problems with Apache eating all my RAM until I switched
from the stock Ubuntu 8.04 kernel to one Andy suggested from Debian.
Seems to have fixed it 100% so far.
Alex
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http://learning.longhill.org.uk/disclaimer
2:34 p.m.
Nahh it isnt, im using the following:
Ubuntu 10.04 (fully up-to-date at the moment i do believe)
PHP: PHP 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.2 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: May 13 2010
20:01:00)
Wordpress: 3.0.1
On 6 August 2010 15:25, Alex Harrington <alex(a)longhill.org.uk> wrote:
Does anyone know why this happens, or if there
is a
workaround/resolution for it?
Is it Ubuntu 8.04?
I had horrible problems with Apache eating all my RAM until I switched
from the stock Ubuntu 8.04 kernel to one Andy suggested from Debian.
Seems to have fixed it 100% so far.
Alex
This email carries a disclaimer, a copy of which may be read at
http://learning.longhill.org.uk/disclaimer
7 Aug
7 Aug
5:54 a.m.
Hi Daniel,
Next time it happens, could you try to find the PID of one of the
massive apache processes, do:
sudo cat /proc/$pid/smaps
and put that file into a pastebin for us?
http://bmaurer.blogspot.com/2006/03/memory-usage-with-smaps.html
Cheers,
Andy
On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 03:34:26PM +0100, Daniel Case wrote:
Nahh it isnt, im using the following:
Ubuntu 10.04 (fully up-to-date at the moment i do believe)
PHP: PHP 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.2 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: May 13 2010
20:01:00)
Wordpress: 3.0.1
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
1:21 p.m.
Andy, when it happens my SSH access just hangs, it never asks me for a
password, my only option is to use the "destroy" command in Xen
Daniel
On 7 August 2010 06:54, Andy Smith <andy(a)bitfolk.com> wrote:
Hi Daniel,
Next time it happens, could you try to find the PID of one of the
massive apache processes, do:
sudo cat /proc/$pid/smaps
and put that file into a pastebin for us?
http://bmaurer.blogspot.com/2006/03/memory-usage-with-smaps.html
Cheers,
Andy
On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 03:34:26PM +0100, Daniel Case wrote:
Nahh it isnt, im using the following:
Ubuntu 10.04 (fully up-to-date at the moment i do believe)
PHP: PHP 5.3.2-1ubuntu4.2 with Suhosin-Patch (cli) (built: May 13 2010
20:01:00)
Wordpress: 3.0.1
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
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3:45 p.m.
Hi Daniel,
If you define "it happens" as "apache using all my RAM and killing
my VPS" then yes I can imagine that is how it goes. However you
could add some monitoring to tell you when it's getting like that.
You could also set a ulimit on the amount of virtual memory that
apache can have, so it would just kill apache.
You don't *have* to wait until it kills the entire VPS to tell when
something is amiss. :)
Having said that, I'm not sure how well I would be able to
understand the smaps file. Others might be able to do it better
though.
Cheers,
Andy
On Sat, Aug 07, 2010 at 02:21:49PM +0100, Daniel Case wrote:
Andy, when it happens my SSH access just hangs, it
never asks me for a
password, my only option is to use the "destroy" command in Xen
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
4:40 p.m.
On Sat, Aug 07, 2010 at 03:45:27PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote:
If you define "it happens" as "apache
using all my RAM and killing
my VPS" then yes I can imagine that is how it goes. However you
could add some monitoring to tell you when it's getting like that.
You could also set a ulimit on the amount of virtual memory that
apache can have, so it would just kill apache.
Or simply limit the number of apache processes in the apache config
file. I've had a couple of machines that have done this in the past,
and cutting down the number of copies of Apache that can be running at
any one time has solved it. The limits that Debian, for example, ship
with are massively over-sized for a small VPS.
I would suggest setting the MaxClients value (at least) to
something like 7, and the Min/MaxSpareServers values to 1-2.
Hugo.
--
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5:12 p.m.
Hi Hugo,
On Sat, Aug 07, 2010 at 05:40:02PM +0100, Hugo Mills wrote:
On Sat, Aug 07, 2010 at 03:45:27PM +0000, Andy Smith
wrote:
Agreed.
However in this case there appears to be a memory leak somewhere
inside PHP or Apache and judging from what popey has experienced,
all the apache children grow really huge (several hundred MiB each).
So I don't think that limiting the number of them is going to help
in this instance.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
"Whoever is responsible for this stunning design failure deserves continuous
cockpunches." -- jwz
You could also set a ulimit on the amount of
virtual memory that
apache can have, so it would just kill apache.
Or simply limit the number of apache processes in the apache config
file. I've had a couple of machines that have done this in the past,
and cutting down the number of copies of Apache that can be running at
any one time has solved it. The limits that Debian, for example, ship
with are massively over-sized for a small VPS. 
5:36 p.m.
On 7 August 2010 16:45, Andy Smith <andy(a)bitfolk.com> wrote:
You don't *have* to wait until it kills the entire
VPS to tell when
something is amiss. :)
You need to be pretty quick to catch it. I can click a link and within
a second or so the box is hosed. Getting in via the console is pretty
hard too. Executing any commands is pretty futile. I had it today and
happened to have the console already logged in and OOM killer had
already wiped out apache. This is with ulimits on the apache process.
Al.
9 Aug
9 Aug
4:39 p.m.
On 7 August 2010 18:36, Alan Pope <alan(a)popey.com> wrote:
You need to be pretty quick to catch it. I can click a
link and within
a second or so the box is hosed. Getting in via the console is pretty
hard too. Executing any commands is pretty futile. I had it today and
happened to have the console already logged in and OOM killer had
already wiped out apache. This is with ulimits on the apache process.
It was suggested that I grab some /proc/$pid/smaps files from apache
processes that were eating RAM, so here's a couple.
http://popey.com/~alan/apache_issue/
No idea what it means.
Cheers,
Al.
7 Aug
7 Aug
5:46 a.m.
Hello,
On Fri, Aug 06, 2010 at 03:25:14PM +0100, Alex Harrington wrote:
Is it Ubuntu 8.04?
I had horrible problems with Apache eating all my RAM until I switched
from the stock Ubuntu 8.04 kernel to one Andy suggested from Debian.
Seems to have fixed it 100% so far.
These days I would recommend upgrading to 10.04, it's much better.
But there does seem to be this problem, which I do not think is Xen
or kernel-related. I think it will turn out to be a bug in PHP or
apache, possibly tickled by some new feature in Wordpress.
Cheers,
Andy
--
http://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
5009
days inactive
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11 comments
5 participants
participants (5)
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Alan Pope -
Alex Harrington -
Andy Smith -
Daniel Case -
Hugo Mills