Bug#485413: apache2: Apache crashes system due to exessive memory allocation

[Stefan Fritsch <sf@sfritsch.de>]

Hi,

On Monday 09 June 2008, Nico Schottelius wrote:
> The question is how to debug that problem, find out which modules
> allocates that much memory (most likely php, but where is the
> evidence?) and why it allocates so much memory.

What is the value of memory_limit in your /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini ? 
If it is large, maybe your php app simply uses that much memory.

Php 5.2.6 fixes some memory leaks. You could try 5.2.6-1 from Debian 
unstable.

Apache is known to leak memory in long requests (like when streaming 
multimedia data) if the flush() function is used excessively. Do you 
use implicit_flush in your php.ini? Does your application use 
ob_implicit_flush() or many flush()s?


If nothing helps, you can set MaxMemFree and/or MaxRequestsPerChild in 
your apache config as a workaround.

Cheers,
Stefan