Hi Russell, On Thu, 2009-04-02 at 16:45 -0600, Russell Bell wrote: > I run a crontab job that collects the 'top' output every 5 minutes. > Twice in the last 6 months httpd has spawned as many clients > as it can, consuming all memory. For months it uses 14-20 clients > then, suddenly, explodes to creating 50 to 100 - whatever the > value of MaxClients. The logs that record accesses don't show > an increase in accesses or errors - indeed they show a decrease. > I see no unusual behavior in any logs What are those httpd processes serving? Is Apache still responding? > Restarting stops the explosion of clients and all returns to as it was. > The first time it happened I searched for causes, marked it as a > quirk, but it happened again yesterday. If Apache is still responding, you can get an overview of this by requesting the server-status page (if you have mod_status enabled): lynx http://127.0.0.1/server-status If Apache is not responding, I've written a tool which might help you find out what is going on: http://fabletech.com/ftasv This tool can easily be run from cron to log activity at regular intervals. Best regards, Morten -- Morten K. Poulsen <mopo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> CTO, FableTech http://fabletech.com/ --------------------------------------------------------------------- The official User-To-User support forum of the Apache HTTP Server Project. See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/userslist.html> for more info. To unsubscribe, e-mail: users-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx " from the digest: users-digest-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx For additional commands, e-mail: users-help@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx