I am running an apache web server on Linux.

After a period of time it stops responding.

ps -eaf | grep http

generates a whole bunch (like more than 100) of [httpd] entries. Some go back more than two hours.

What I can't figure out is:

Is apache not releasing these?
Is tomcat (the next spot in my webserver) not releasing them?
Is the apparent freezing not related to apache and these httpd entries

Is this a possible right forum to ask this question?

Thanks

Matthias

the whole bunch of httpd processes that you see are child processes forked by apache to handle requests multiple requests.

If you are running a development or personal web server, and are not expecting heavy traffic, you may tweak how many of these child/spare processes to spawn depending on the performance you want out of your webserver. The more childs it spawns, the better performance you get out of the web server, and the more resources apache will take up.

You may tweak this in your apache config file (httpd.conf), and look for fields such as MinSpareServer, MaxSpareServer, and StartServers
MinSpareServers : minimum child servers to have at each time
MaxSpareServers : maximum child servers to have at each time
StartServers : initial number of child servers to spawn when Apache starts


Cheers