Sunday, August 04, 2024
Fixing the final errors from my Apache setup
Shortly after my last post, I noticed more errors happening with the web server:
[Tue Jul 30 10:43:00.768556 2024] [cgid:error] [pid 1706:tid 4149532352] (12)Cannot allocate memory: AH01252: couldn't create child process: 12: boston.cgi [Tue Jul 30 10:43:00.768714 2024] [cgid:error] [pid 1869:tid 3908467632] [client 178.128.207.138:57024] End of script output before headers: boston.cgi [Tue Jul 30 10:43:01.137027 2024] [cgid:error] [pid 1706:tid 4149532352] (12)Cannot allocate memory: AH01252: couldn't create child process: 12: boston.cgi [Tue Jul 30 10:43:01.137173 2024] [cgid:error] [pid 1707:tid 3774184368] [client 178.128.207.138:57034] End of script output before headers: boston.cgi
I found one potential fix for this—just set the default stack size of Apache to 512k in size
(just 512k—sheesh I'm old).
That was simply adding ulimit -s 512 to the startup script,
but that still wasn't the full answer:
[Tue Jul 30 22:37:33.042327 2024] [mpm_worker:alert] [pid 5599:tid 3924880304] (12)Cannot allocate memory: AH03142: ap_thread_create: unable to create worker thread [Tue Jul 30 22:37:35.045085 2024] [mpm_worker:alert] [pid 5672:tid 3924880304] (12)Cannot allocate memory: AH03142: ap_thread_create: unable to create worker thread [Tue Jul 30 22:38:38.108993 2024] [mpm_worker:alert] [pid 6091:tid 3924880304] (12)Cannot allocate memory: AH03142: ap_thread_create: unable to create worker thread [Tue Jul 30 22:38:40.112150 2024] [mpm_worker:alert] [pid 6161:tid 3924880304] (12)Cannot allocate memory: AH03142: ap_thread_create: unable to create worker thread [Tue Jul 30 22:38:42.114553 2024] [mpm_worker:alert] [pid 6229:tid 3924880304] (12)Cannot allocate memory: AH03142: ap_thread_create: unable to create worker thread [Tue Jul 30 22:38:44.117182 2024] [mpm_worker:alert] [pid 6304:tid 3924880304] (12)Cannot allocate memory: AH03142: ap_thread_create: unable to create worker thread
I ended up having a little bit of back-and-forth with the settings of the VM that runs my server, alllowing a bit more memory than it was configured for. And since then, no more such errors in the error log. All that's now showing up is crap like:
[Sun Aug 04 15:58:49.248654 2024] [core:error] [pid 872:tid 4129409968] [client XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:59190] AH10244: invalid URI path (/cgi-bin/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/.%2e/bin/sh) [Sun Aug 04 15:58:51.854583 2024] [core:error] [pid 2444:tid 4120341424] [client XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX:59760] AH10244: invalid URI path (/cgi-bin/%%32%65%%32%65/%%32%65%%32%65/%%32%65%%32%65/%%32%65%%32%65/%%32%65%%32%65/%%32%65%%32%65/%%32%65%%32%65/bin/sh)
and notifiations about secure certificate rotatations. Another interesting thing I noticed is the accumulated CPU time over the past few days:
[spc]brevard:~>ps aux USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND ... root 868 0.0 0.1 26760 24652 ? Ss Aug01 0:12 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd apache 871 0.0 0.1 26188 20876 ? S Aug01 0:35 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd apache 872 0.0 0.2 64532 34184 ? Sl Aug01 5:09 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd apache 873 0.0 0.1 61060 32152 ? Sl Aug01 4:59 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd apache 875 0.0 0.1 62516 31460 ? Sl Aug01 5:01 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd apache 1035 0.0 0.1 61716 32148 ? Sl Aug01 5:03 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd apache 2444 0.0 0.1 61500 32160 ? Sl Aug01 4:45 /usr/local/apache2/bin/httpd ... gopher 1231 0.0 0.0 10708 9596 ttyp4 S+ Aug01 0:33 lua port70.lua /home/spc/gopher/config.lua spc 1232 0.1 0.0 13600 12140 ttyp5 S+ Aug01 6:51 lua GLV-1.12556.lua non-checkin/conf.lua ... [spc]brevard:~>
I've included the lines for my gopher and Gemini servers just for comparison. Apache is accumulating a bit more CPU time than I expected, but when thinking about it, it's not so strange. Not only is it running TLS (like the Gemini sever) but it's also supports the HTTP/2.0 protocol, which is a bit more involved than the simpler HTTP/1.x protocol.
