PHP eating up server resources!

[google@jfruh.com]

Hello all-

Apologies to everyone for what's probably a very inchoate and
uninformed question, but I've been thrust into the position about
having to learn more about PHP very quickly. (I'm also posting to
alt.comp.lang.p hp, since I'm not sure what the difference is between
the two groups.)

Basically, I run a Web site that includes two PHP-based subsites -- one
WordPress site and one PHPBB site. I get traffic that strikes me as
heavy but not out of control -- it's been steadily building, currently
at about 12,000 pageviews and 6,000 unique visitors on the average
weekday, with 90 percent of the pageviews on the WordPress site. All
of this is hosted on a shard server with a hosting company. I know
just enough about PHP programming to hack around in the premade
templates and customize my apps, and next to nothing about how PHP
works on the server end.

Yesterday, my Web host informed me that my domain was eating up a lot
of server resources, and that PHP was the root cause. If I understand
him right, PHP processing loads are causing Apache to fork lots of
additional processes. He was unable to tell me whether this was a
sudden spike or whether things had been steadily building and had
crossed some threshhold. I upgraded both WordPress and PHPBB to their
most recent versions in case there was some bug or vulnerability, but
this did not solve the problem.

I found the following article online that, if I understand it right
(and again, I very well may not), says that PHP can often overload
default Apache installs:

http://tabo.aurealsys.com/archives/2006/01/17/lighttpd-and-fastcgi-migration-from-apache/

So my question is, does this sound like the sort of thing that might be
a result of just Apache and PHP getting a lot of traffic? Or could it
be a bug or something in one of my apps? I'm posing this question in
WordPress and PHPBB forums, but thought I'd see if any PHP maven would
take pity on me and tell me if the problem is at that end.

Enormous thanks in advance for any help anyone can offer. For what
it's worth I'm running PHP 4.4.2; Apache 1.3.34 (Unix); and Linux
(kernel version 2.6.9-34.ELsmp) on an x86 server of some sort.

Oh, and my web host sent me the following "listing of the top
apache/php processes" (though they all look like HTML GET processes to
me):

Srv PID Acc M CPU SS Req Conn Child Slot Host VHost Request
0-5 6930 0/23/15201 G 0.24 1 0 0.0 0.12 186.87
169.237.42.155 (unavailable) GET /h2videos/aow2.mp4 HTTP/1.1
1-6 7515 0/11/15278 _ 0.36 2 197 0.0 0.49 181.53
67.170.155.199 www.joshreads.com GET /images/0604/i060418getfuzzy .png
HTTP/1.1
2-6 7523 0/11/15327 W 0.58 1 0 0.0 0.19 180.29
66.98.198.49 www.joshreads.com GET /wp-rss2.php HTTP/1.0
3-6 7535 0/14/15351 _ 0.26 2 828 0.0 0.14 197.07
65.161.109.99 www.numatek.com GET
/pphlogger/pphlogger.php?i d=winchest&refe rer=http%3A//www.w
4-6 7547 0/15/15212 W 0.59 2 0 0.0 0.08 164.51
72.30.133.109 www.talkxbox.com GET
/forum/showthread.php? mode=hybrid&t=1 730 HTTP/1.0
5-6 7508 0/20/14816 W 0.43 1 0 0.0 0.08 169.51
67.64.115.226 www.joshreads.com GET / HTTP/1.1
6-6 7513 0/9/15285 _ 0.86 3 4490 0.0 0.10 190.84
66.98.198.49 www.joshreads.com HEAD http://joshreads.com/wp-rss2.php
HTTP/1.0
7-6 7557 0/13/15239 W 0.95 10 0 0.0 0.06 177.00
85.255.45.42 www.squackle.com GET /images/CornBL.jpg HTTP/1.1
8-6 7565 0/19/15332 _ 1.69 12 38 0.0 0.23 200.75
131.107.0.74 www.joshreads.com GET /images/0604/i060425apt3g.jp g
HTTP/1.1
9-6 7571 0/11/15100 _ 0.61 3 5191 0.0 0.16 180.45
131.107.0.74 www.joshreads.com GET / HTTP/1.1
10-6 7517 0/13/15219 _ 0.40 2 7085 0.0 0.30 206.82
216.180.36.115 www.kisantech.com GET /brochures/path-inst-manual.pdf
HTTP/1.1
11-6 7518 0/8/15126 _ 0.17 17 192 0.0 0.07 191.08
131.107.0.74 www.joshreads.com GET /images/0604/i060425fbofw.pn g
HTTP/1.1
12-6 7578 0/18/15023 _ 0.21 24 0 0.0 0.09 212.55
69.128.101.82 www.joshreads.com GET
/wp-content/themes/beeblebrox-tweak/print.css HTTP/1.1
13-6 7583 0/10/15115 _ 0.41 11 907 0.0 0.50 184.53
72.30.110.88 www.talkxbox.com GET
/forum/showpost.php?p= 40381&postcount =15 HTTP/1.0
14-6 7588 0/10/15177 _ 0.33 6 0 0.0 0.09 196.61
67.176.145.50 www.gregjesse.com GET /misc/ds_blk.jpg HTTP/1.1
15-6 7595 0/9/15203 W 0.27 6 0 0.0 0.06 209.70
156.98.182.137 www.joshreads.com GET / HTTP/1.1
16-4 29955 0/2345/15112 G 58.49 2 0 0.0 24.36 204.50
87.16.226.236 (unavailable) GET /dl/sc2ost/02/09_-_Healing_Winds. mp3
HTTP/1.1
17-6 7510 0/33/15349 W 0.61 2 0 0.0 0.18 166.79
148.241.64.15 www.technologynewsdaily.com GET /node/596 HTTP/1.0
18-6 7511 0/20/15472 _ 0.76 7 120 0.0 0.11 184.87
69.128.101.82 www.joshreads.com GET
/wp-content/themes/beeblebrox-tweak/local.css HTTP/1.1
19-6 7599 0/8/15191 _ 0.59 15 0 0.0 0.05 195.20
69.128.101.82 www.joshreads.com GET
/wp-content/themes/beeblebrox-tweak/style.css HTTP/1.1
20-6 7610 0/7/15255 W 0.05 3 0 0.0 0.09 182.90
193.110.187.231 www.psxe.co.uk GET /index.php HTTP/1.1
21-6 7512 1/18/15277 W 0.75 2 5029 0.0 1.08 172.44
69.128.101.82 www.joshreads.com GET / HTTP/1.1
22-6 7615 1/8/15133 W 0.17 6 509 25.6 0.26 221.50
131.107.0.74 www.joshreads.com GET /images/0604/i060420drabble. gif
HTTP/1.1
23-6 7616 1/4/15112 W 0.14 9 0 36.8 0.10 190.17
131.107.0.74 www.joshreads.com GET /images/0604/i060419middleto ns.jp

[Manuel Lemos]

Re: PHP eating up server resources!

Hello,

on 04/28/2006 04:32 PM google@jfruh.co m said the following:[color=blue]
> Yesterday, my Web host informed me that my domain was eating up a lot
> of server resources, and that PHP was the root cause. If I understand
> him right, PHP processing loads are causing Apache to fork lots of
> additional processes. He was unable to tell me whether this was a
> sudden spike or whether things had been steadily building and had
> crossed some threshhold. I upgraded both WordPress and PHPBB to their
> most recent versions in case there was some bug or vulnerability, but
> this did not solve the problem.[/color]

Usually this is caused by the excessive number of static content being
served at the same time by the Apache server that also serves PHP pages.

PHP itself is not the problem, but if you use persistent database
connections and serve many static content files that do not need
database connections, you force an exceeding number of database
connections to open needlessly. Those connections consume a lot of
memory. When the RAM is exhausted, your situation agravates until the
server crashes, if you do not have anything to limit connections.

The solutions for this are, move all static content to a multithreaded
HTTP server, like thttpd, and limit the Apache server simultaneous
clients to a reasonable value that does not exhaust your RAM. This will
protect your from eventual spikes.

Here you find more details about this:

http://www.meta-language.net/metabase-faq.html#excessive-connections

--

Regards,
Manuel Lemos

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http://www.metastorage.net/

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