general/3312: Children die. Parent stops serving requests

[Ole Tange <ol...@tange.dk>]

>Number:         3312
>Category:       general
>Synopsis:       Children die. Parent stops serving requests
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    apache
>State:          open
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   apache
>Arrival-Date:   Thu Oct 29 16:20:01 PST 1998
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     ole@tange.dk
>Organization:
apache
>Release:        1.3.3
>Environment:
Linux ns 2.0.32 #1 Wed Nov 19 00:46:45 EST 1997 i586 unknown 
Heavily upgraded RedHat 5.0
>Description:
It would seem this problem is also discribed in PR#3190, PR#1950 and PR#1940.
PR#1940 was solved by upgrading glibc, which is already done: glibc-2.0.7-13 
(and did not solve the problem).

/server-status gives longer and longer times in SS and it appears as if the
children never tell the parent that they have stopped. So the parent will
not spawn new children to replace the deceased.
>How-To-Repeat:
In http://ole.tange.dk/children-dies.tgz is:
httpd.conf
errors_log
/server-status for every minute
strace -ff   of apache process and children.
>Fix:
Some better way of extracting debugging info would probably be usefull.

A temporary fix: examine if httpd has children. If not: restart apache.
It is not a good fix, if you server several 1000 vhosts.
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted:
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