I don't know a whole lot, but with only one process starting it sounds like you may have the debug switch on (-X). I am unsure how different RedHat is from Fedora, but if you have a /etc/sysconfig/httpd I would look in there to see if you have the -X option turned on.

-X     Run httpd in debug mode. Only one worker will be started and the
             server will not detach from the console.


Robert Fox wrote:
Rob-

Thanks for the response.

This is definitely not a configuration issue. The error logs don't seem to indicate why only one process starts, but the children fail to start. I get a normal startup message in the logs. The only thing that clears this is re-booting the host.

Are there other places where I could look?

Rob

Rob Wilkerson wrote:
I'd check your config first.  I forget the syntax for Redhat, but for
my Knoppix system it's "/usr/sbin/apache2 -t".  To check your system,
locate the httpd executable and display it's help:

"/path/to/httpd -h"

Then, assuming everything checks out, check /var/log/httpd.  Hopefully
this will provide enough info to move forward.

On 7/24/06, Robert Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

Hello again-

I haven't received any responses on this, so I thought maybe I could simplify my question. If Apache fails to restart, where should I look to find out why? The log files? System logs? Other Apache files (which ones)? Should I run a
diagnostic while Apache is frozen? What should I look for?

Thanks very much for any replies. I'm starting somewhat from ground zero here.

Rob Fox

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Apache overwhelmed, restart fails
Date: Tue, 18 Jul 2006 11:42:07 -0400
From: Robert Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: users@httpd.apache.org

Hello-

We've been using Apache 2 here at Notre Dame libraries for several years now, and for the most part, the performance has been very reliable. However, there have been times during very peak usage periods when the Apache servers will freeze and essentially stop responding to further requests. We have several CGI applications running under the server that can be taxing, and sometimes Apache seems to get overwhelmed, and the maximum number of available server spawns are reached.

When this happens, I've tried to restart Apache by first shutting it down and then starting the server again. However, what usually happens is that the first server process will start, and child processes do not spawn. This renders Apache useless again, and I'm usually forced to completely re-boot the server machine on which Apache is running in order to clear RAM and reset the network connections. Then, Apache comes up and everything is fine until the next incident. Here
are some specs on our installation:

Server version: Apache/2.0.54
OS Version: Red Hat EL 3.0 (kernel 2.4.21-4.ELsmp)
Modules loaded: PHP 5, authentication modules, etc.

The CGI applications are mainly Perl based.

I've looked in the Apache logs (both main and error) and there is no indication that the server is failing around the time that Apache freezes up. It seems odd that I can't stop the Apache servers and restart them, which solves 90% of these sorts of issues with Apache. Except for administrative purposes, I rarely need to restart Apache, so this isn't a major issue. But, I would like to know where to look to try and determine what is happening when I'm unable to restart Apache. It's odd that the first process would start but the child processes won't. Any ideas?

Thank you for your help,

Rob Fox

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