On Jan 23, 2005, at 7:27 PM, J65nko BSD wrote:

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 17:33:35 -0800, Mark Edwards <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On Jan 23, 2005, at 3:48 PM, J65nko BSD wrote:

On Sun, 23 Jan 2005 14:53:38 -0800, Mark Edwards
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I have posted about this problem a couple of times with not much
response, I'm afraid, but here is a different take on it perhaps.  I
have a 4.10p5 running and for roughly the last two months my swap
space
has been getting eaten uncontrollably.  The only clue I have is that
it
resets when I restart Apache (1.3.33), and so if I set up a cron job
to
restart Apache every day or hour the problem is contained:

https://secure.antsclimbtree.com/mrtg/ants.swap-year.png

Oddly, my physical memory doesn't seem to be generally affected:

https://secure.antsclimbtree.com/mrtg/ants.ram-year.png

I have 128MB of physical RAM and 384MB of swap.

The only clue I have with Apache is a lot of this in
/var/log/messages:

Jan 21 18:25:06 lilbuddy /kernel: pid 68446 (httpd), uid 80: exited on
signal 6


But I'm not sure what to make of it.  The only thing Google turns up
related to those messages are notes about CodeRed virus attacks, but
Apache 1.3.33 is suppose to address that issue.

Does anyone have any suggestion of how to attack this problem?  I'm
totally stumped.


You don't give much background info about the server. Which modules Apache is using, mod_perl, mod_ssl?, which applications it runs, WebMail?

Cannot you see in the Apache logs, which pages are being served before
the time of the signal 6 messages?
Google for "Apache+memory+leak" and include every module or app you
are running..


Gather more info what the system is doing exactly. Write a script for
cron to run "netstat -m", "sockstat -4", "ps -ax". at regular times
and have the output mailed to you.

BTW 128 MB memory for a webserver is not much these days ;)

=Adriaan=

Thanks for the reply. I am running apache+mod_ssl-1.3.33+2.8.22, with mod_php4 and mod_dav.

As far as web apps, I run Squirrelmail, phpbb2, MT-2.661, Mailman,
analog, webalizer. The weird thing is that I ran all of those except
phpbb2 for years with no problem. Perhaps it is phpbb2's doing, but I
can't find a correlation between that and the signal 6 messages, and in
any case phpbb2 hardly gets used. I can watch swap go up and up
without anyone actually using phpbb2.


Doing Google on Apache+memory+leak as you suggest leads to people
describing similar situations, where Apache eats more and more swap and
has to be restarted, but I can't find anyone posing a solution to the
problem.


I will just keep monitoring it I guess, looking for clues. 128MB might
not be much, but it has worked fine for running essentially the same
set of software for years, and all of a sudden there's a problem. I
wish I could tie it to some specific update or change, but I can't.
The closest I can come is turning on softupdates and installing phpbb2,
and neither of those seems to correlate.


Very odd...

Have you seen this security warning for phpbb? http://www.auscert.org.au/render.html?it=4653

Just want to close this thread by saying that I seem to have solved the problem, although I'm not 100% sure what did it. I'm pretty sure it was a recompile of mm-1.3.1. I tried this because I noticed that it was the only required component for apache that was last updated in mid-November, right around when this nonsense started. All the other required ports had been updated more recently, so I figured that perhaps something was amiss when that one got compiled in November. Plus, the fact that mm deals with memory management.


That appears to have been the culprit. I'm running along with swap moving between the 100MB and 200MB range, with no big spikes, and RAM at a steady 64MB out of 128MB. Performance is steady and back to normal. Hurrah!

A 180Mhz Pentium Pro with 128MB RAM is no speed demon, mind you, but it serves web pages, hosts email, and routes pretty damn fine for a machine that was literally in the garbage when I rescued it. PHP is a bit slow, but still totally acceptable, and faster than the 256Kbps outgoing connection.

I also doubled my swap from 400MB on one drive to 800MB between two drives. And I stripped down my kernel a bit, removing lots of options that aren't used on this box. Those might have affected things as well, but my hunch is it was mm-1.3.1 that was out of whack.

Anyway, all's well that ends well.  Thanks!

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