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Path: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au!newshost.carno.net.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!munnari.OZ.AU!news.ecn.uoknor.edu!news.wildstar.net!cancer.vividnet.com!hunter.premier.net!www.nntp.primenet.com!nntp.primenet.com!feed1.news.erols.com!news From: Ken Bigelow <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc Subject: Re: Apache Server Error: Cannot Spawn Child Process Date: Tue, 15 Oct 1996 19:10:52 +0000 Organization: Erol's Internet Services Lines: 39 Message-ID: <3263E1BC.7CD6@www.play-hookey.com> References: <3263CEEF.1F78@digicity.net> Reply-To: kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com NNTP-Posting-Host: kenjb05.play-hookey.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0 (Win16; U) Damien Thorn wrote: > > This may seem off topic, but I suspect the problem to be related to > the underlying FreeBSD 2.1.0R on our web server. > > Basically, without much warning, all of our CGI programs error out > more often than they run - both Perl scripts and compiled C. The > error logged by the Apache httpd is that it couldn't spawn the child > process. The CGI stuff runs the gamut from custom to standards like > chiemail, counters and redirect. > > System is a Pentium 133 with 64 Meg. Kernel is generic (which I half > suspect may be the issue). A ps shows that all combined processes are > using about 50% of the memory, and very little CPU resources. > > Has anyone seen this problem? Any clues why it would suddenly begin? > Is it related perhaps to an increase in server traffic? > > Really need some help with this one. Thanks! A couple of possibilities here, based on my own experiences with 2.1R and Apache. First, make sure that all CGI scripts are world readable as well as executable (chmod 755). That one had me going for awhile, but it's essential. Second, with the user load you seem to have, did you increase the MAXUSERS line in the kernel configuration file and recompile? The default for this parameter is 10; you'll probably want to up it to around 50. It doesn't actually set the number of users allowed, but it is used to calculate the max number of live processes, so if you run out, you can't run another program. -- Ken Are you interested in | byte-sized education | http://www.play-hookey.com over the Internet? |