general/7429: rapid memory leaks leading to kernel panic

[David Gatwood <dg...@mklinux.org>]

>Number:         7429
>Category:       general
>Synopsis:       rapid memory leaks leading to kernel panic
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       critical
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    apache
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   apache
>Arrival-Date:   Sat Mar 17 15:20:01 PST 2001
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     dgatwood@mklinux.org
>Release:        1.3.14
>Organization:
apache
>Environment:
Various varieties of Linux, various kernels, various compiler versions,
mostly egcs-2.90.25 (MkLinux DR3)
>Description:
Depending on the number of hits the server gets, after upgrading to 1.3.14,
the machines are suddenly either slowing to a crawl or crashing.  On one
machine, apache grew from 20 megs to over 200 megs of memory usage in only
5 hours.  I have been forced to add a cron script to kill and restart apache
hourly to keep that machine from crashing on a daily basis.

It should be noted that none of the sites involved use any modules whatsoever
other than server side parsing (of every page) and the occasional CGI
script.  Literally, they're straight text and graphics with the exception of
a counter and a single search page that is almost never used.

One of the machines was running 1.3.9 originally, another was running 1.3.2.
I think one of them was running 1.3.12, but I'm not certain.  That should help
narrow down the possible problem areas.
>How-To-Repeat:
My configuration is exactly the standard config except that allowoverride is
set to all, options is set to all, and for many of the sites, AddType or
AddHandler was used to make .html files be treated as .shtml.  Other than
that, any PowerPC-based Linux box should generate the same symptoms repeatably.
>Fix:
I'd start by looking at the server side parse code and see if it leaks like
a sieve....  Beyond that, I don't have any suggestions.
>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
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