One of my apache processes is huge - how can I find out why?

Posted by Malcolm Box on Server Fault See other posts from Server Fault or by Malcolm Box
Published on 2010-09-17T08:56:17Z Indexed on 2012/06/18 3:18 UTC
Read the original article Hit count: 435

Filed under:

apache2

|

django

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mod-wsgi

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memory-usage

I'm running Apache 2.2.12 with mod_wsgi, hosting a Django site. Most of the apache child processes weigh in at about 125MB RSS, but occasionally I see one child balloon to > 1GB RSS.

At this point there's usually 1 huge process (>1GB), a couple of large ones (>500MB) and the rest are still ~125MB. These are the mod_wsgi daemon processes.

I've tried using memory leak tracing in Python to see if it's the Django code, and I see no leaks. Looking in the logs doesn't show any particularly strange requests.

I'm stumped on how to figure out what's causing this - any ideas? Also, any workaround ways to kill the large apache process when it gets too big, without bringing apache down?

Some more details:

Not using mod_php
Using pre-fork

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