[users@httpd] This could help someone

["Chidanand Gangur" <chidanand.gangur@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi friends,

I want to share some of my observations which I found when debugging an issue with Apache reaching its MaxClient limit.

I am using apache-1.3.34 with PHP and ssl. 

I was facing a frequent problem of Apache reaching its MaxClient Limit
all of a sudden and use to stay in that state for a long time with no
other request getting served. 

This condition use to happen all of a sudden with no clues in the log
files. I noticed one important thing in netstat, there were lot of UNIX
stream sockets some in ESTABLISHED and CONNECTED state this use to
haunt me a lot. Initially I ignored it since me too had used UNIX
stream socket to communicate with the backend in my PHP scripts. 

After keen observation to the netstat output I noticed that the UNIX
stream sockets are getting created event though the PHP script was not
called. 

Finally I recompiled my apache with mod_status and got a report. I seen
Lot of threads are stuck in DNS lookups and were not able to recover. I
turned off the HostNameLookup from my conf file and belive me every
thing went fine smoothly

The UNIX stream sockets were also the result of same. Things are
working fine since yesterday. Apache is now able to serve 1000 users. 

-- 
Chidanand Gangur
Pune.