Alex Greg wrote:
Hi,
[...]
[Thu Sep 30 09:44:43 2004] [error] (12)Cannot allocate memory: fork: Unable to fork new process
there is lots of documentation around about how to tune your httpd processes so that they don't kill your box. see, for example
http://perl.apache.org/docs/1.0/guide/performance.html
as well as
chapters 11 and 12 in practical mod_perl chapter 9 in the mod_perl developer's cookbook
Hi Geoff,
Thanks for your response. Sorry I wasn't clear; the httpd processes don't actually kill the server, they just slow Apache right down to the point at which it doesn't respond to requests any more. I am still able to get onto the box and kill the processes etc. without having to do a hard reboot or anything. My question is what's causing Apache to get into the state where it can't fork any more shells from Perl.
This is because a shell call to date ($date = `date`;) is failing - this is most likely what's causing the failure to fork we see above.
if you want to avoid that shell call try POSIX::strftime() instead.
We have quite a lot of calls via backticks throughout our code - and not just for things like date that are trivially replaceable. Would you recommend replacing these as far as possible?
but I suspect that the httpd failure isn't caused by calling out to shell, but rather that the shell call failure is a symptom of the real problem.
Agreed. I will have a thorough read of the performance guide. Can you suggest what the real problem might be, or what might be causing it?
Thanks very much,
-- Alex
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