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Date: Thu, 04 Feb 2010 11:24:58 -0800
From: John Thomas <gmane-2006-04-16@jt-socal.com>
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Subject: [users@httpd] Runaway Apache Processes - Second Victim

I have been using Apache for several years without trouble on CentOS 4 
originally, CentOS 5 now.  Most of my applications are php/mysql and 
mostly Drupal.

FYI, I have run into a problem that sounds identical to Dan Bunyards 
thread here:
http://markmail.org/thread/pnmwmalsfe6c7j6c

Everything runs fine, then all of a sudden I have 12 or so Apache 
processes all trying to use 100% of the CPU and the system slows to a 
crawl.  I can replicate the issue by running:
  ab -n 100 -c 25  http://example.com/

The problem seems to be getting worse (today, a hacker sent a bunch of 
urls to my server looking for phpmyadmin and that took me down).  I have 
a very low traffic server with personal websites only.  I have a busy 
day when Google crawls my system.  I have about 1.5GB of ram.

List of some rpms I use:
httpd-2.2.3-31.el5.centos.2
php-5.3.1-1.el5.remi
php-mysql-5.3.1-1.el5.remi
php-mysql-5.3.1-1.el5.remi

I watch htop when it happens and the server seems to process everything 
fine for a while with httpd and mysqld using a good amount of cpu, then 
mysqld use slows and many more httpd processes start using some cpu.  
Then about 12 or so (never counted) httpd procesess use the cpu about 
equally and the server is nearly unresponsive.  The memory was not 
exhausted.

I have tried many, many things in my configuration hoping I could figure 
it out.  I do not know how to run straces or other developer type 
things, but I can probably figure it out if you give me some hints.

-- 
Sincerely,
John Thomas


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