Php – Apache httpd processes and PHP out of memory

You're running out of swap because you're using all your RAM and then some. You have a serious problem that you need to rectify right now.

You have two choices: ignore cause and just add more RAM, or target the problem of what's actually munching on your memory.

Adding RAM is fairly cheap and fairly easy if it's your server but it's a temporary fix and if it's a VPS or a rented server, it's not so cheap. Let's have a go at fixing the root problem instead. What's sucking in that much memory? Here are a few tips:

• Turn off InnoDB (unless you need it) in MySQL
• Beat Apache (and MySQL) with the Stick of Configuration +5
• Consider a smaller httpd like cherokee, lighttpd or nginx (they're really fast and eat almost no RAM). Main downside is you can't use .htaccess files but you can hard-code in their functionality.
• Are you using an OP-code cache for PHP? Try turning it off or switching to another, more efficient one.

In terms of just getting swap items back into real RAM, you can do that by:

swapoff -a && swapon -a

But don't try then when you've got less free memory than you have things in swap. It'll crash your server.

The main parameter for tweaking Apache's memory usage will be MaxClients. Too low a value and you will run out of available slots to serve client requests. Too many and you will use up all your RAM and begin to use swap space which will kill performance (it may appear to be a server crash).

One way of tuning MaxClients is to observe the system's memory usage and tweak the setting up/down as needed. If the server begins to swap edit it down. If the server has free memory put it up.

You can also estimate the maximum value by looking at Apache's memory usage. Start top and press M to sort processes by memory. You should see something like:

  PID USER      PR  NI  VIRT  RES  SHR S %CPU %MEM    TIME+  COMMAND
18698 apache    17   0  141m  59m  41m S  0.0  1.6   4:57.46 httpd
18591 apache    17   0  141m  59m  41m S  0.0  1.5   4:54.79 httpd
22917 apache    16   0  141m  57m  39m S  0.0  1.5   4:57.44 httpd
18595 apache    16   0  142m  57m  38m S  0.0  1.5   5:23.43 httpd
18697 apache    16   0  139m  56m  41m S  0.0  1.5   5:09.29 httpd
18735 apache    25   0  141m  56m  38m S  0.0  1.5   5:05.32 httpd

Subtract the RES and SHR columns to get the approximate memory usage per Apache instance. In this case it is around 16MB. If I have 4GB of RAM and wish 3GB of it to be used for Apache my MaxClients setting will be around:

MaxClients = 3000/16 = 188

So, in this case, I might start with a value of 150-200 but I would watch the memory usage and if it ever began to get close to using swap I would decrease MaxClients 10-20%. Also note that the value of 3GB is just a random example. On servers only running Apache I might be able to use almost all of the 4GB. In other cases I might only want 1 or 2GB for Apache save the remaining for other applications, the system or the cache.

Edit: Answering Additional Questions

There are generally no magic values of MaxClients or the other Apache configuration parameters that will make your server suddenly twice as fast. Some servers will appear to run just fine whether MaxClients is 10 or 1000. There are two main cases where the MaxClients setting is "bad":

• Too Low: When MaxClients is too low you will reach a situation where all Apache clients are being used and new connections go into a queue waiting for the next client to become available. If you enable Apache's mod_status you can get a real time view of how many clients are busy at any one point of time. This state is relatively easy to diagnose as the site will become slow during times of high traffic and all clients can be observed to be in use.
• Too High: When MaxClients is too high you will get into the case of exhausting all RAM and begin to use the swap. When this occurs your site's performance will drop to essentially zero (consider the speed difference between RAM and disk). This state can be much more difficult to observe and diagnose as a server will run just fine with a high MaxClients until it experiences a spike in traffic. For example, on a site that gets a few hits an hour I can set MaxClients to 1000, far more than supportable by RAM, but never seen an issue due to Apache only needing to use one or two clients at a time. I'll only spot the problem when I get a spike in traffic, increasing the number of clients used concurrently, until RAM is exhausted and swap space is needed.

While I don't know the details of your server, application, or traffic I can suggest the following configuration values as a starting point. Try them, monitor the server's load and usage, and change settings as needed.

• mod_status: Enable this so you can see Apache's usage. For more advanced statistics install a monitoring application like Zabbix/Nagios so you can track server usage and traffic patterns.
• MaxClients: Set to a value of 100-200. I would start with a lower value if unsure and monitor memory/CPU/Apache usage. This will be the main parameter to tweak.
• MaxRequestsPerChild: This specifies when an Apache client/child will be restarted. There is no wrong value (though very small values may be inefficient) and it will depend on what content your serving. For dynamic content a large non-zero value (say 1000) will stop your httpd processes from eventually becoming too large.
• Other Parameters: While I haven't done thorough benchmarking of the remaining parameters they should have a relatively minor effect unless you set them to very low or very high values. Using the defaults should be fine for the majority of sites. See the Apache Prefork or Worker module documentation for a complete description of the parameters and which is used in each module (there is no point trying to tune a parameter you don't use).
• Benchmarking: As you adjust parameters I would recommend using a benchmarking tool like ab (ApacheBench) or siege to get a quantitative number on your server's capabilities. Relying soley on feel or worse, seeing if it crashes or not, is not a good method to tune a web server's parameters.