Debian Lenny

Napsty · 01-29-2011, 09:58 AM

Hello,

I've been looking for a solution for the past days but still haven't found one which resolves this issue.
My Apache web server (respectively a child process) is crashing several times a day. I wanted to find the exact reason and activated the core dumps but even though the crashing-issues continue, the core dumps were never created.

I have found several howto's which basically point to the same steps:

- set "ulimit -c unlimited"
- add "CoreDumpDirectory" directive into apache2.conf (Debian's httpd.conf)

Another info I've found is that /proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable shouldn't be 0 - so on one howto it said to echo 2 into it, on another one to echo 1 to /proc/sys/fs/suid_dumpable - didn't work with neither of them.

Any idea or personal experience on this one?

Thanks a lot in advance!

barriehie · 01-29-2011, 10:26 AM

Anything useful in syslog?

Napsty · 01-29-2011, 10:35 AM

Nope, unfortunately nothing relevant. Only the crash itself:

Code:

kernel: [10041132.565684] apache2[5559]: segfault at 4c1325b0 ip 7f9b3524b7d7 sp 4c132590 error 6 in libphp5.so[7f9b34e68000+777000]

dmesg shows the same:

Code:

apache2[5559]: segfault at 4c1325b0 ip 7f9b3524b7d7 sp 4c132590 error 6 in libphp5.so[7f9b34e68000+777000]

But still, nothing which would show information about a core dump.

Napsty · 01-29-2011, 06:22 PM

By the way I could solve it - by chance. I compiled the newest version of PHP today and restarted Apache. From now on it works; core dumps are created in the given directory defined by the httpd directive.

Napsty · 01-31-2011, 03:47 AM

OK - this is strange and I don't have a solution for it.
Now no coredumps are created anymore.
From the log-output it looks like as soon as I logged out of the box, Apache stopped creating core dumps. This is just an idea but could it be that the ulimit -c value is only active as long as I am logged in?

Code:

[Sun Jan 30 00:03:48 2011] [notice] child pid 19585 exit signal Segmentation fault (11), possible coredump in /tmp
[Sun Jan 30 00:10:53 2011] [notice] child pid 19671 exit signal Segmentation fault (11), possible coredump in /tmp
[Sun Jan 30 00:15:49 2011] [notice] child pid 19557 exit signal Segmentation fault (11), possible coredump in /tmp
[Sun Jan 30 00:20:25 2011] [notice] child pid 20602 exit signal Segmentation fault (11), possible coredump in /tmp
[Sun Jan 30 01:12:29 2011] [notice] child pid 27803 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Jan 30 05:10:37 2011] [notice] child pid 27831 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Jan 30 06:18:13 2011] [notice] child pid 18554 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Jan 30 07:25:58 2011] [notice] child pid 22097 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Sun Jan 30 08:34:43 2011] [notice] child pid 26104 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)

edit: Hmmm.. actually I doubt my own question because I've added "ulimit -c unlimited" into /etc/profile and manually checked it as www-data