Many httpd processes

[anand]

Hi,
I have compiled and installed httpd version 2.0.48 on a server and everymorning i see many httpd processes. These processes take CPU equalpercentage among themselves and make the processor 100% busy. Thus slowing down the server. When i stop and start the server theseprocesses go away. This happens every morning and otherwise the webserver works fine. Is there a way to automatically kill/stop these unwanted processes?
How to do this from the configuration file?
I have the following settings and errors
//
<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers 5
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 10
MaxClients 150
MaxRequestsPerChild 100
</IfModule>
<IfModule worker.c>
StartServers 2
MaxClients 150
MinSpareThreads 25
MaxSpareThreads 75
ThreadsPerChild 25
MaxRequestsPerChild 0
</IfModule>
<IfModule perchild.c>
NumServers 5
StartThreads 5
MinSpareThreads 5
MaxSpareThreads 10
MaxThreadsPerChild 20
MaxRequestsPerChild 0
</IfModule>
\\
From error.log(many such errors/warnings about child processes during service httpd restart):
//[Fri Feb 27 08:03:07 2004] [warn] child process 20944 still did notexit, sending a SIGTERM
[Fri Feb 27 08:03:07 2004] [warn] child process 20974 still did notexit, sending a SIGTERM
[Fri Feb 27 08:03:07 2004] [warn] child process 21051 still did notexit, sending a SIGTERM
[Fri Feb 27 08:03:08 2004] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down
[Fri Feb 27 08:03:34 2004] [notice] Digest: generating secret for digest authentication ...
[Fri Feb 27 08:03:34 2004] [notice] Digest: done
[Fri Feb 27 08:03:35 2004] [notice] Apache/2.0.48 (Unix) configured --resuming normal operations
\\
Also there are total 25 such processes.Have i done any misconfiguration? I have also tried recompilation but it did not help.I used "./configure --enable-mods-shared=all --enable-ssl"I have compiled this version on other machines but such error never occurred. Any suggestions will help . Thank you.
-- Anand.

[nikhil]

there is a way to kill/stop the unwanted processes but for doing that you would have to know the exact pid's of all the processes which I guess is not possible since they would change from day to day. You might want to see why there are 25 processes running...on my machine I have one parent process and 8 child processes running...its strange that you get so many processes only in the mornings...did you try a different version of apache 1.x perhaps?

[anand]

Hi Nikhil,
The httpd version which i have installed is one of the stable versions and i have tried it on other servers also. I cannot try 1.3 version (v/s 2.x) currently since its of the different breed right? I am puzzled about the processes which remain and does not die out. Even the method of 'kill'ing the processes is not wise right? I wanted that the unwanted processes should perish automatically.
Thank you.

[Dolda2000]

Apache is supposed to have several processes (it keeps a number of worker threads). However, they are clearly not supposed to take up your CPU all the time. Try stracing one of them to try and find out what they're doing with their cycles.

[anand]

Hi,
Regarding the "Many http processes"
I am new to debugging i tried the following:

----------------- top o/p
22617 apache    15   0 15184  14M  5960 S     0,0  2,9   0:03   0 httpd
22618 apache    15   0 13668  13M  5948 S     0,0  2,6   0:01   0 httpd
22619 apache    15   0 10152 9,9M  5564 S     0,0  1,9   0:00   0 httpd
22620 apache    15   0  8924 8924  5568 S     0,0  1,7   0:00   0 httpd
22621 apache    15   0 13440  13M  5896 S     0,0  2,6   0:00   0 httpd
22624 apache    15   0 10348  10M  5596 S     0,0  2,0   0:00   0 httpd
22625 apache    15   0 10504  10M  5724 S     0,0  2,0   0:00   0 httpd
22626 apache    15   0 10404  10M  5656 S     0,0  2,0   0:00   0 httpd
22790 apache    15   0  8056 8056  5060 S     0,0  1,5   0:00   0 httpd
------------------ top o/p end

-----------------I got the following o/p for strace
[root@test root]# strace -p 22790
trace: ptrace(PTRACE_SYSCALL, ...): Operation not permitted
detach: ptrace(PTRACE_DETACH, ...): Operation not permitted
---------------

Was this expected ? apache was running normally when i tried this. Please help !

Mod edit: added code tags.

[Dolda2000]

No, that was not expected...

However, I can't see that those processes are actually doing the bad things that you described. If this is indeed a top output, then they aren't consuming any CPU cycles at all. Does the thing that you described happen often?

[nikhil]

yeah...%CPU shows 0.0...so its not consuming cpu at all....maybe its something else thats eating up your cpu cycles!!

[anand]

Apache was running normally when i tried strace!

[Dolda2000]

Well, in that case I don't see the problem. You said that those processes were taking up the entire CPU, while in fact they aren't. Would you mind clarifying that?

[anand]

This morning the status was like this!

----------------------top:
31288 apache    25   0  6860 6304  2464 R     7,9  1,2   8:11   0 httpd
31618 apache    25   0  5848 5280  2340 R     7,9  1,0   5:51   0 httpd
31639 apache    25   0  6744 6188  2476 R     7,9  1,2   3:16   0 httpd
31652 apache    25   0  5860 5292  2340 R     7,9  1,0   4:05   0 httpd
31549 apache    25   0  8456 7684  2472 R     7,1  1,4   2:41   0 httpd
31290 apache    25   0  6776 6220  2400 R     6,5  1,2   9:31   0 httpd
31286 apache    25   0  6692 6136  2396 R     5,9  1,1  24:12   0 httpd
31287 apache    25   0  6724 6168  2432 R     5,9  1,2  13:46   0 httpd
31289 apache    25   0  5932 5364  2360 R     5,9  1,0  17:51   0 httpd
31514 apache    25   0  6648 5972  2400 R     5,9  1,1   4:50   0 httpd
31551 apache    25   0  6704 5620  2388 R     5,9  1,0  11:33   0 httpd
31651 apache    25   0  7020 6184  2808 R     5,9  1,2   1:30   0 httpd
31675 apache    25   0  7492 6848  3112 R     5,9  1,3   0:54   0 httpd
31803 apache    25   0  6084 5516  2564 R     5,9  1,0   1:59   0 httpd
31861 apache    25   0  6952 6384  3444 R     5,9  1,2   0:27   0 httpd
31616 apache    15   0  7352 6796  3148 S     0,0  1,3   0:00   0 httpd
31658 apache    15   0  9696 9092  3812 S     0,0  1,7   0:00   0 httpd
31796 apache    15   0  9516 8960  3544 S     0,0  1,7   0:00   0 httpd
31804 apache    15   0  7584 7028  3192 S     0,0  1,3   0:00   0 httpd
31805 apache    15   0  7524 6968  3284 S     0,0  1,3   0:00   0 httpd
31860 apache    15   0  5848 5276  2716 S     0,0  1,0   0:00   0 httpd
31862 apache    15   0  5928 5356  2748 S     0,0  1,0   0:00   0 httpd
31539 apache    25   0  6736 6172  2396 T     0,0  1,2   6:39   0 httpd
--------------------------

Thus cpu was 0 % free

--------------------------

[root@test root]# strace -p 31286
trace: ptrace(PTRACE_SYSCALL, ...): Operation not permitted
detach: ptrace(PTRACE_DETACH, ...): Operation not permitted
[root@test root]# 
--------------------------

Please tell me what can i do now?
Is there a problem in apache? or i tried the wrong command?
Thank you