[Mediawiki-l] Serious frozen PHP processes

Mon Apr 10 13:51:45 UTC 2006

Hi!

I have a very confusing problem using MediaWiki 1.5.8,
PHP 4.3.10-16 (cgi-fcgi), MySQL 4.0.24_Debian-10sarge1-log and
Apache 2.0.54 on Debian Sarge.

Sometimes PHP processes are just freezing and hold in memory. If too
many from them are gathered, the server is running out of RAM and
everything is standing. I tried to switch over to fastCGI (mod_php isn't
possible due to security reasons), but there are still this kind of
processes left:

$ ps ux
USER       PID %CPU %MEM   VSZ  RSS TTY      STAT START   TIME COMMAND
perrype  17856  0.0  0.6 33512 5792 ?        S    07:45   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17861  0.0  0.6 32968 5824 ?        S    07:45   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17863  0.0  0.6 33920 5796 ?        S    07:45   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17865  0.0  0.6 33180 5824 ?        S    07:45   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17893  0.0  0.6 32748 5792 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17894  0.0  0.6 32752 5776 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17897  0.0  0.6 33632 5832 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17899  0.0  0.6 32744 5792 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17901  0.0  0.6 33060 5824 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17903  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17911  0.0  0.6 33180 5820 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17943  0.0  0.6 32876 5824 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17945  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:47   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17947  0.0  0.6 32992 5824 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17953  0.0  0.6 33076 5824 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17957  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17958  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17959  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17960  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17965  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  17983  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  18001  0.0  0.6 32740 5768 ?        S    07:48   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  18288  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    07:56   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  18525  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    08:00   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  18538  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    08:00   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  21330  0.0  1.0 32788 9476 ?        S    14:49   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  21332  0.0  1.0 32736 9720 ?        S    14:49   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  21334  0.0  1.2 33416 11088 ?       S    14:49   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  21338  0.0  0.6 31272 5576 ?        S    14:49   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
perrype  21339  0.0  1.2 32916 11320 ?       S    14:49   0:00 /usr/bin/php4-cgi
...

You see the first are started at 07:47 allmost 8 hours ago!

stracing some of these processes gives:

$ strace -p 17856
Process 17856 attached - interrupt to quit
write(1, "\2\307>\330\3432\330\243^\262\270\21\354qy\315\242^\263"..., 30507 <unfinished ...>
Process 17856 detached

$ strace -p 17861
Process 17861 attached - interrupt to quit
write(1, "\246X]\204h\316\216?|8x\367\303\307\203\363\257\237m\377"..., 846 <unfinished ...>
Process 17861 detached

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,
  Alexander Nofftz

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