Bug#419949: apache2: put status in argv?

[Mark Sheppard <mark@ddf.net>]

Package: apache2
Severity: wishlist

Something which I'd find very useful would be an option in the config
file which would cause each apache process to put its current status
into argv, just like sendmail does.  This status would be something
along the lines of "idle" or the URL of the request it's handling.
This feature would be very useful for monitoring apache in realtime,
for example using htop.

I run an apache server with a couple of thousand virtual hosts, and
the machine it's running on is getting a bit overloaded.  At the
moment I'm not sure of the best way to go about finding out which are
the most processor-intensive sites (quite a few use PHP and/or CGI
scripts).  If the feature I suggested was implemented then a quick
look at htop would instantly identify which sites to move to a
different server to reduce the load.

Cheers,
Mark.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: 4.0
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.18-4-686-bigmem
Locale: LANG=en_GB.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_GB.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)