Questions[php-cgi](server)

I am getting constantly high and wildly fluctuating CPU usage % for php-cgi commands as seen via "top" on my Centos server..

I have a server density account and it seems that this is a common trend:

User - PID - CPU % - MEM % - VSZ - RSS - TT - Stat - Started - Time - Command

500 - 6389 - 22.4 - 3 - 271136 - 32380 - ? - S - 20:26 - 0:40 - /usr/bin/php-cgi

Seems there are about 6 or so of those records in my processes list at any given check-in.

Any ideas what's causing this? I have fast_cgi installed and the module is loading.. Not sure why it isn't handling this though.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Ryan

I have a dex x64 on a virtualbox win7pro host. My apache2 will stop responding after a page request or other activity such as upload via ftp. The php.cgi becomes non responsive and a restart is required any help tracking down the culprit sending the SIGTERM would be much appreciated. thx Art

my apache2.conf has

<IfModule mpm_prefork_module>
ServerLimit 1024
StartServers 10
MinSpareServers 10
MaxSpareServers 20
MaxClients 1024
MaxRequestsPerChild 0
</IfModule> `

From the apache2 log I have

[Wed Jun 20 05:07:01 2012] [notice] caught SIGTERM, shutting down [Wed Jun 20 05:07:03 2012] [notice] FastCGI: process manager initialized (pid 4369) [Wed Jun 20 05:07:03 2012] [notice] Apache/2.2.16 (Debian) mod_fastcgi/2.4.6 PHP/5.3.3-7+squeeze13 with Suhosin-Patch mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.10.1 configured -- resuming normal operations

and from the accounting output with lastcomm

php.cgi                www-data __         0.13 secs Wed Jun 20 04:49
lastcomm               root     pts/2      0.10 secs Wed Jun 20 04:49
php.cgi                www-data __         0.18 secs Wed Jun 20 04:49
php.cgi                www-data __         0.18 secs Wed Jun 20 04:47
apache2                root     pts/1      0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
tput                   root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2           F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2ctl             root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2          S     root     pts/1      0.77 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
rm                     root     pts/1      0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
install                root     pts/1      0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
mkdir                  root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46

apache2ctl        F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
sleep                  root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2          SF    root     __         0.54 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.14 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.07 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.06 secs Wed Jun 20 04:36
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.07 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.11 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.04 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.06 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.08 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.03 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
grep                   root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2ctl             root     pts/1      0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2                root     pts/1      0.24 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2ctl        F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2ctl             root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2                root     pts/1      0.22 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2ctl        F    root     pts/1      0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2           F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
grep                   root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
tr                     root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
pidof            S     root     pts/1      0.11 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
cat                    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2           F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
grep                   root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
tr                     root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
pidof            S     root     pts/1      0.05 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
cat                    root     pts/1      0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2           F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2ctl             root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2                root     pts/1      0.34 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2ctl        F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2           F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
apache2           F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
smbd             SF    root     __         0.25 secs Wed Jun 20 04:46
php.cgi                www-data __         0.14 secs Wed Jun 20 04:45
php.cgi                www-data __         0.19 secs Wed Jun 20 04:42
cron             SF    root     __         0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39
sh               S     root     __         0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39
find                   root     __         0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39
maxlifetime            root     __         0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39
php5                   root     __         0.13 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39
which                  root     __         0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:39
exim4            S     root     __         0.01 secs Wed Jun 20 04:37
php.cgi                www-data __         0.04 secs Wed Jun 20 04:36
php.cgi                www-data __         0.12 secs Wed Jun 20 04:35
php.cgi                www-data __         0.11 secs Wed Jun 20 04:35
php.cgi                www-data __         0.14 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
lastcomm               root     pts/2      0.09 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2                root     pts/1      0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
tput                   root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2           F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2ctl             root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          S     root     pts/1      0.54 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
rm                     root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
install                root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
mkdir                  root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2ctl        F    root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
sleep                  root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    root     __         0.80 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
sleep                  root     pts/1      0.00 secs Wed Jun 20 04:34
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.26 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.12 secs Wed Jun 20 03:59
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.13 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.13 secs Wed Jun 20 03:59
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.15 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.18 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.07 secs Wed Jun 20 04:21
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.18 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.17 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.30 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.09 secs Wed Jun 20 03:58
apache2          SF    www-data __         0.02 secs Wed Jun 20 04:13

Does this PHP-CGI security issue (CVE-2012-1823) affect PHP when it's running under individual regular-user accounts with mod_fcgid?

The wrapper .fcgi script I've been using is:

#!/bin/bash
PHPRC=$PWD/../etc/php5
export PHPRC
umask 022
export PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN
SCRIPT_FILENAME=$PATH_TRANSLATED
export SCRIPT_FILENAME
exec /usr/bin/php-cgi

I wasn't sure which was best to post in so I posted here and on http://webmasters.stackexchange.com

I will delete the other if this post is more relevant here.

I'm having a slight issue with memory issues on my web server. It is Windows 2008 RC2 IIS 7.5 with Fast CGI installed and running, all up to date.

I have a number of Wordpress websites running on this server, yet they do not all run at the same time; server load/traffic is not that high at the moment.

However when some of them run, even if it just me on the site, they spawn multiple php-cgi.exe instances to handle my "surfing".

Some points to note:

• I have Hyper Cache installed on each Wordpress site, and seems to be working fine.
• I understand that the PHP-CGI.exe instances only stay alive for as long as required.

For example: one Wordpress website with pretty much no content and minimal plugins (Hyper Cache and Google Analytics) spawn:

• The w3wp.exe instance and levels out around 10MB
• 5 x php-cgi.exe which are each roughly 9MB

That amounts to 55-60MB at first run. It seems a bit extreme to me. Another site is pretty much the same at first boot but spawns 8 x php-cgi.exe instances. To put it another way, I would expect this usage from ASP.NET not PHP.

Can I limit the php-cgi.exe to one instance per website and have it handle all requests for that website?

Another point I should mention, I am running PHP 5.2.17. If I upgrade to PHP 5.3.* will this problem go away? (Not that won't break some sites but I can live with that)

Would my only solution to be move them to a Linux box or will I have the same issues doing so?

Thanks for your time and help.

My server is a Linode 512, and on it I run a Wordpress MU with 3 websites (they don't get a lot of visitors) and a couple of NodeJS apps.

I need to switch to Lighttpd because Apache 2 was using about 59% of the server's RAM, and now I have the php-cgi processes taking up about 43.6% of the server's RAM:

• most often 2 processes use 16.5% of the RAM each,
• 4 processes use 1.8% of the RAM each, and
• 4 more processes use 0,8% of the RAM, each

How can I have less of these processes ? I'm almost sure they're not all needed for the trafic this server gets...

I tried only allowing 2 children, but I still have those 10... This is my fastcgi.server section in lighttpd.conf.

fastcgi.server = ( ".php" =>
                    ( "localhost" =>
                      (
                        "socket" => "/var/run/lighttpd/php-fastcgi.socket",
                        "bin-path" => "/usr/bin/php-cgi",
                        "bin-environment" => (
                          "PHP_FCGI_CHILDREN" => "2",
                          "PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS" => "4000"
                         )
                      )
                    )
                  )

What else can I do to tune lighttpd to use less RAM ?