[users@httpd] Apache/mod_ssl/IE problem

[d....@bcs.org.uk]

Hello,

We have a problem with apache with the following symptoms

- the number of apache processes hits MaxClients
- the CPU on the box isn't doing much when we hit the max number of apache
processes
- sometimes apache recovers after about 5 minutes and we reduce to a more
typical number of processes
- other times apache has totally locked up an required a restart

We see no pattern as to when this is occuring. It has occurred during quiet
periods and during periods of heavy load.

We have upped the MaxClients to 256, but we hit that level too.

All our users connect over SSL.

We have seen the following articles on the Microsoft site that makes us think
that this could because of broken version of IE in our user community. However,
we don't know from the articles the exact combination of OS and IE that would
cause the problems and therefore haven't been able to recreate in a test
environment.

http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?kbid=305217
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/security/bulletin/MS04-004.mspx


We also get the following error in the SSL error log:

[Tue Oct 26 06:43:04 2004] [error] mod_ssl: SSL handshake interrupted by system
[Hint: Stop button pressed in browser?!] (System error follows)
[Tue Oct 26 06:43:04 2004] [error] System: Connection timed out (errno: 145)

We see this quite a lot during normal operation. However, during the periods
were we hit the MaxClient processes, we see the number of these errors increase
by an order of magnitude.

Has anyone else seen similar problems and if so, what was their solution? If
this is the problem described on the MS site, what version of Windows and IE do
we need to recreate? Are there any server side only solutions?

We are running on Solaris with apache 1.2.26 and mod_ssl 2.8.10 using a Sun
Crypto 1 SSL accelerator card.

Any help greatly apprecicated.

Cheers,

Dave.

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