Help Figuring Out Apache Crash

Apache Crash Windows 2003 Server

[Tault]

Alright this is one that i haven't been able to fix for some time. It has been going on for a year plus which is painful and my only fix was to have apache auto restart when it crashes. Its apache crashing but we have no clue as too why. Posted it on the apache forums and they said it was php. Posted it on the php forums and they said it was apache. So im hoping the power of webmasterworld can figure this one out.

First of all here is my server specs.
- Windows2003 server (needed for certain applications that we run, so linux is out of the question)
- Apache Latest version
- php latest version

So basically when the site is under heavy load it seems to reset. So maybe im missing something small. Or there is a trick im not aware of. So start offering suggestions please and ill just start marking done one by one :). Thanks for all the help too as a precursor :).

[wilderness]

The first place to begin is with your error logs.

[Tault]

Went thru the logs and ruled them out so i couldnt find it there.

So far

1 - Ruled out the error logs as the problem was still there.
2 - Rules out hardware as we have moved servers to different companies.

[Tault]

1 - Ruled out the error logs as the problem was still there.
2 - Rules out hardware as we have moved servers to different companies.
3 - Have done multiple performance updates too.

I also am using zend.

Here is an example of the crash.

This is a crash line:
[Wed Aug 24 11:51:22 2011] [notice] Parent: child process exited with status 128 -- Restarting.

This is a crash:
[Thu Aug 25 12:58:41 2011] [notice] Parent: child process exited with status 3221225477 -- Restarting.

[wilderness]

"Parent: child process" [google.com]

a 2006 thread [webmasterworld.com]

[SteveWh]

Does your setup use MySQL?

Possibly relevant info (found with web search, accuracy not guaranteed):

status 3221225477 is apparently an "access violation", which can be an uninitialized pointer pointing to memory loc 0 (illegal).

Could be caused by using a version of a DLL module that is not compatible with the versions of MySQL/Apache/PHP that you're using. Especially "libmysql.dll".

----

When I upgraded PHP from 5.2 to 5.3 on my Windows XP/Apache2.2/PHP test server, I considered copying the new 5.3 files into the directory occupied by 5.2, to overwrite the old 5.2 files with the newer versions. I believe that would have been a mistake because it would have left a number of 5.2 files in place that have no 5.3 counterparts.

Instead, I completely deleted the 5.2 directory structure (after saving php.ini to use in the new version), and copied 5.3 in fresh.

I believe a number of files ended up no longer there. My WAMP installation has *no* version of libmysql.dll in any Apache/PHP/WinNT folder. There is only one in the MySQL installation of files. It was designed for the version of MySQL that I'm using, and having only the one copy ensures that its version, not one from an old PHP, for example, is always used.

A similar situation could exist for other .dll's.

Make sure your versions of MySQL/Apache/PHP are all new enough to be compatible with each other.

[Tault]

K i traced it down with some windows debugging tools and this is what im getting now.



Faulting application httpd.exe, version 2.2.17.0, faulting module php5ts.dll, version 5.3.5.0, fault address 0x0008d7e5.
Faulting application httpd.exe, version 2.2.17.0, faulting module php5ts.dll, version 5.3.5.0, fault address 0x000af734.

[SteveWh]

A web search on those error messages, gradually removing overly-specific terms (such as version numbers) when there are too few results, turns up many relevant looking links that will probably lead toward a solution.

One article at a website by Stephen Rushing mentions commenting out unneeded extensions in php.ini, including some extensions that aren't the ones mentioned in the error messages. That page currently isn't loading, but can be viewed from the Google cache.

Possibly useful, or irrelevant:

--In my httpd.conf (of an older Apache 2.2) is the line
LoadModule php5_module "c:/wamp/php/php5apache2_2.dll"

In the /php/ directory are some other DLLs with similar names:
php5apache.dll
php5apache2.dll
php5apache2_2_filter.dll
php5apache2_filter.dll

I don't know what the others do, but presumably specifying the wrong one in httpd.conf could lead to problems.

--In my system path are listed both the PHP and MySQL installation directories, in that order:

C:\TEST>path
PATH=.....C:\wamp\php\;.....C:\Program Files\MySQL\MySQL Server 5.1\bin

As mentioned previously, I purged all files from the older PHP install to ensure that no outdated file could be found prematurely in /php/, preventing the system from finding the correct version in /MySQL/.