I found it !!!
Issueing an "apachectl restart" (or kill -HUP) make the apache parent
process size grow !
This is the case on all of our FreeBSD boxes. I can't reproduce it on Linux.
Take a look at this:
--------------------------------------------------------------------
apachectl start
# ps aux|grep httpd | grep root
root 70820 59.0 5.6 46408 43552 ?? Ss 4:03PM 0:04.40
/usr/local/sbin/httpd -k start
So: 43MB right after starting
Now send it a SIGHUP:
# kill -HUP 70820
# ps aux| grep httpd | grep root
root 70820 17.4 7.7 62440 59564 ?? Rs 4:03PM 0:08.48
/usr/local/sbin/httpd -k start
Wow: the HTTP root process has grown from 43 to 59MB just because I sent it
a SIGHUP.
On my test box it will take about 50 "apachectl restart" commands, but then
apache crashes with
a "Out of memory during request" error.
Philip, as you're using FreeBSD too, could you confirm this ?
I'm using a log rotation script which send a SIGHUP to apache every night,
so that was actually
causing the apache root process to grow.
Thanks anyone for helping me to find this problem !
Len
