Apache – httpd memory usage

apache-httpdmemoryout of memory

Having some problems with httpd (Apache/2.2.29) memory usage.

Over time, memory usage in the httpd processes creep up until it's eventually at 100%.

Last time I restarted httpd was about 24 hours ago. Output from free -m is:

[ec2-user@www ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1655       1415        239          0        202        424
-/+ buffers/cache:        788        866
Swap:         1023          4       1019

To prove that it's definitely httpd, I restarted httpd and ran free -m again:

[ec2-user@www ~]$ sudo service httpd restart
Stopping httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
Starting httpd:                                            [  OK  ]
[ec2-user@www ~]$ free -m
             total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:          1655        760        894          0        202        360
-/+ buffers/cache:        197       1457
Swap:         1023          4       1019

So, restarting Apache takes free memory from 239 Mb to 894 Mb – which seems like a big leap.

I've been going through the list of currently enabled Apache modules (there's quite a lot) and disabled/removed mod_wsgi and mod_perl (neither of which are required for this server, which is running a PHP-based web application – Magento, specifically).

Based on https://servercheck.in/blog/3-small-tweaks-make-apache-fly, I've run ps aux | grep 'httpd' | awk '{print $6/1024 " MB";}' and get the following output:


[root@www ~]# ps aux | grep 'httpd' | awk '{print $6/1024 " MB";}'
15.1328 MB
118.09 MB
127.449 MB
129.059 MB
117.734 MB
113.824 MB
125.062 MB
123.922 MB
119.855 MB
108.066 MB
136.23 MB
114.031 MB
113.27 MB
110.695 MB
102.113 MB
113.234 MB
186.816 MB
118.602 MB
0.835938 MB

Running the other suggested diagnosis tool for MaxClients which is ps aux | grep 'httpd' | awk '{print $6/1024;}' | awk '{avg += ($1 - avg) / NR;} END {print avg " MB";}' returns the following:

[root@www ~]# ps aux | grep 'httpd' | awk '{print $6/1024;}' | awk '{avg += ($1 - avg) / NR;} END {print avg " MB";}'
110.212 MB

This server (Amazon AWS m1.small instance) has 1.7 Gb of RAM. So, therefore:

Any further pointers/suggestions on how best to tweak the httpd settings or how to diagnose what exactly might be causing this?

Best Answer

Here's what I've done to 'solve' it:

  1. Set MaxClients 7 (based on (1740.8Mb Memory on server - 900Mb for MySQL + other stuff) / 111Mb average usage per httpd process = 7.5747747747747747747747747747748)

Therefore:

<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers       8
MinSpareServers    5
MaxSpareServers   20
ServerLimit      256
MaxClients         7
MaxRequestsPerChild  4000
</IfModule>

  1. Disable all Apache modules except for authz_host_module, log_config_module, expires_module, deflate_module, setenvif_module, mime_module, autoindex_module, negotiation_module, dir_module, alias_module, rewrite_module, php5_module

  2. Remove the mod_ssl package since the client isn't using https:// whatsoever.

I'll report back once this new configuration has been running a while to see if this solves it.

Some inspiration here was borrowed from: http://www.activoinc.com/blog/2009/08/31/performance-optimized-httpd-conf-for-magento-ecommerce/ and http://www.activoinc.com/downloads/httpd.conf-magento

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