keep track server hang

[debajit kataki]

I use mod_status server-status to check live apache child if anyone went haywire or put some added load on my server. I also use some custom scripts to do the same on live trafic along with native linux command set.

But sometimes, in past it happen to me that, we need to reboot the server owing to tremendous load on server by some apache child process.

Now my question is after reboot since i don't have any clues about what caused the issue, how do I go about to facilitate the same. May be its happening for a particular V-host only.

Please advice/suggest. Any tool etc. ?

~Debajit Kataki

[webdoctor]

we need to reboot the server

In these situations can you restart Apache rather than rebooting the server, or is it completely unresponsive?

I suggest checking/changing your apache.conf (sometimes httpd.conf) in order to the amount of resources Apache will consume.

[debajit kataki]

Thanks.

In my case the server becomes totally unresponsive.
Are you talking about something like RLimit etc.

Any pointer on that please?

~Debajit Kataki

[webdoctor]

Are you talking about something like RLimit

No, I'm talking about settings such as KeepAliveTimeout, whether you use Prefork or Worker, and how you configure StartServers, MinSpareServers, MaxSpareServers, ServerLimit, MaxClients and MaxRequestsPerChild.

Are you using the out-of-the-box settings in your apache.conf (httpd.conf) or have you already changed some of these settings?

If I was looking at this I'd probably asking questions like these:

Is your server physical or virtual?

How much memory does your server have?

Is it doing other tasks as well as running Apache - i.e. database, email.

Are you monitoring load using something like sar [ibm.com] or munin [sourceforge.net]?