Groups > comp.os.linux.networking > #1384

Re: apache swapping the system to death

From	"J.O. Aho" <user@example.net>
Newsgroups	alt.os.linux.mandriva, alt.os.linux, comp.os.linux.networking
Subject	Re: apache swapping the system to death
Date	2012-05-22 06:57 +0200
Message-ID	<a20km4Fv4jU1@mid.individual.net> (permalink)
References	<m3Cur.26439$h64.11967@newsfe13.iad>

Cross-posted to 3 groups.

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On 22/05/12 03:35, unruh wrote:
> I am running a web server on a Mandriva 2010.2 system. Today the system
> suddenly became increadibly non-responsive. When I finally logged on as
> root, the swap file was up around 3GB, (no wonder response was horrible)
> and there were 160 instances of httpd running. After I finally managed
> to shut them down, (killall -9 httpd) response was restored. I looked in
> the /var/log/httpd/access_log there did not seem to be much unusual
> there. There were some google.com with weird addreses, and some internal
> connections which were the only things that looked out of the oridinary.

Tweak your apache settings, so that no 160 instances will be started, 
with some google you should be able to find some setting recommendation 
formulas.

I think I had some issue with an earlier wordpress version (pre 3.3), 
which got really strange, specially when it tried to access a page which 
didn't exist and it came into a horrible loop (yes, wordpress may 
request pages itself).

> Eg
> 66.249.68.198 - - [21/May/2012:18:19:23 -0700] "GET /aggregator/www.umsl.edu/~keelr/010/www.twitter.com/www.iaea.org/Publications/Documents/Board/2008/bit.ly/www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/may/04/pay-vince-cable HTTP/1.1" 200 72658 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
> 66.249.68.73 - - [21/May/2012:18:19:26 -0700] "GET /aggregator/www.nytimes.com/2012/04/05/opinion/node/node/www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17769717?page=226 HTTP/1.1" 200 38984 "-" "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)"
>
> and
>
> ::1 - - [21/May/2012:17:32:03 -0700] "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0" 200 - "-"
> "Apache/2.2.15 (Mandriva Linux/PREFORK-3.2mdv2010.2) (internal dummy
> connection)"

This is all okey, nothing to worry about, if you don't want to see them, 
there is an instruction how to filter those at apache.org.
Has nothing to do with the increased number of services loaded.

> But could any of these be respoinsible for 160 connections?
>
> The other suspicious thing is that there was 6 hour gap in
> the logs

That don't sound good at all, could have been caused by the swapped out 
syslog, but I would think it's wise to take a look at your system with 
rkhunter and/or chkrootkit. Also check your other logs and see if you 
miss 6 hours.

-- 

  //Aho

Thread

apache swapping the system to death unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2012-05-22 01:35 +0000
  Re: apache swapping the system to death "J.O. Aho" <user@example.net> - 2012-05-22 06:57 +0200
  Re: apache swapping the system to death Wolfram Gloger <wmglo@dent.med.uni-muenchen.de> - 2012-05-22 11:24 +0200
    Re: apache swapping the system to death unruh <unruh@invalid.ca> - 2012-05-22 15:21 +0000

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