Hello fellow Apache community, we just switched from our old hosting platform (which used to run PHP as an Apache module) to Plesk which (in our configuration) runs PHP through FastCGI. In general we prefer the principle and security features of FastCGI, so we want to stick to it.
However, since we started migrating some bigger websites (bigger means more hits a day) we encounter regular stability problems. After some time (can be some minutes to some hours) some websites just don't react anymore. They keep loading and loading until Apache quits with a timeout. The only way to solve this issue, is to restart apache. When the server hangs `ps aux | grep php` shows the following output: user2 9708 0.0 1.1 263772 37544 ? S Feb21 0:04 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user2.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user2 9836 0.0 1.2 264028 37812 ? S Feb21 0:03 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user2.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 15775 0.1 1.4 266704 45476 ? S 07:36 0:24 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 15780 0.0 1.4 266704 45408 ? S 07:36 0:14 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 15790 0.1 1.4 266588 45244 ? S 07:36 0:25 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user3 23580 0.0 1.0 261880 34020 ? S 08:17 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user3.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 23806 0.2 1.1 264128 37644 ? S 11:40 0:01 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user3 24230 0.0 0.8 259016 26112 ? S 04:53 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user3.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 27796 0.4 1.0 259772 33556 ? S 11:50 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 27831 0.2 1.1 264124 37616 ? S 11:51 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 27857 0.2 1.0 259772 33292 ? S 11:52 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 27963 0.2 1.1 262480 36284 ? S 11:52 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 28001 0.2 0.9 261580 28856 ? S 11:52 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 28012 0.1 0.9 261596 28860 ? S 11:52 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 28037 0.3 0.8 260548 27712 ? S 11:53 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 28042 1.3 1.1 263600 36044 ? S 11:53 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini user1 28058 0.7 1.1 263852 36124 ? S 11:53 0:00 /usr/bin/php-cgi -c /var/www/vhosts/user1.domain.tld/conf/php.ini If I keep waiting for some time the PHP processes change slightly and are being replaced over time by processes having 0:00 all the time. We already tried to increase some numbers in the FastCGI-settings, but it didn't help. No matter how high we set FcgidMaxProcesses and FcgidMaxProcessesPerClass: At the time the server crashes, we only have about 10 to 20 running processes - never more. This is how our current config looks like: <IfModule mod_fcgid.c> FcgidIPCDir /var/run/mod_fcgid/sock FcgidProcessTableFile /var/run/mod_fcgid/fcgid_shm FcgidIdleTimeout 40 FcgidProcessLifeTime 30 FcgidMaxProcesses 1000 FcgidMaxProcessesPerClass 100 FcgidMinProcessesPerClass 25 FcgidConnectTimeout 30 FcgidIOTimeout 130 # PHP's max_execution time is 120, so give FCGI 10 secs extra FcgidInitialEnv RAILS_ENV production FcgidIdleScanInterval 10 </IfModule> The error_log doesn't show anything suspicious besides some lines from time to time: mod_fcgid: process 23786 graceful kill fail, sending SIGKILL Do you have any ideas what the problem could be? Any help would be very appreciated. If you need more specific information, just ask for it and I'll take a look at the server. But since I have not even the slightest idea, what the cause could be, I'm not sure what to post here. Regards roberto
