[users@httpd] Apache 1.3.x eats all avaible memory (doesn't close some connections)

[Lech Karol Pawłaszek <ik...@kni.univ.szczecin.pl>]

Hello.

I've encountered a weird problem and i don't know what to do.

Few days ago I recieved another server to administrate. Machine had "some 
problems with memory". 

After some tests - i thought it was kernel fault - load was about 160; 
processes kscand and kswapd had very high cpu usage. After even more tests - 
i've find out that apache eats lots of memory (it's a 4 GB RAM machine + 4 GB 
of swap)... well it eats all avaible memory and wants more. Why?

Comparing ps aux/top views with /server-status site, i've found out that the 
processes which are eating the most of the memory are those which are still 
open (and "sending reply") even that the most recent request was a long time 
ago (like 2000 seconds). Is it normal situation?

Example:

Srv	PID	Acc	M	CPU	SS	Req	Conn	Child	Slot	Host
10-1	5692	0/0/215	W 	0.02	1006	0	0.0	0.00	1.87 	66.249.65.36

 PID USER     PRI  NI  SIZE  RSS SHARE STAT %CPU %MEM TIME CPU COMMAND
5692 apache   15   0   286M 286M  6652 S     0.0  7.1 0:45 0   /usr/sbin/httpd 

Look at SS Value! Isn't it too high?!

TIPS:
1) It usually happens if visitors are googlebot (as in the example above) or 
yahoo slurp! crawler (or similar).

2) For a first glance i thought it affects only one of my vhost sites, but 
after a while i see there are at least two of them (there is about 1200 
vhosts).

3) I tried to reproduce such behavior and i made it. It is possible to enter 
URL from a webbrowser(which looks like that:
$VHOST/index/oferta/wakacje/Francja/57365/Maeva_Planchamp_et_Mottet/Valmorel
) and after a while webbrowser has loaded site but on server-status page it 
looks like httpd is still "sending reply".

4) Server version: Apache/1.3.33 (Unix)

Regards,

-- 
Lech Karol Pawłaszek <ike>
"You will never see me fall from grace..." [KoRn]

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