[nycbug-talk] Odd behavior on FreeBSD 6.3 box

[Jesse Callaway]

On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 1:08 AM, Matt Juszczak <matt at atopia.net> wrote:
> I have a simple webserver/mysql box that usually works fine.  But tonight,
> I was seeing load averages in the 80's and 90's, incredibly high I/O wait,
> and perl in the top of the processlist using 80-90% of CPU.  Seemed to be
> spamassassin related, but I also had a ton of apache processes running.
>
> I'm still looking to see if perhaps a website was being hammered, but in
> the meantime I noticed that I was getting this repeatedly (about once a
> second) in my http-access log:
>
> ::1 - - [30/Jan/2009:05:52:23 +0000] "OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0" 200 - "-"
> "Apache/2.2.9 (FreeBSD) mod_ssl/2.2.9 OpenSSL/0.9.7e-p1 DAV/2 PHP/5.2.6
> with Suhosin-Patch mod_perl/2.0.4 Perl/v5.8.8 (internal dummy connection)"
>
>
> Does anyone know what that is (other than the fact that its a loopback
> dummy connection)?  It seems to have stopped since I restarted postfix and
> apache.
>
> Thanks for any thoughts...
>
> -Matt
> _______________________________________________
> talk mailing list
> talk at lists.nycbug.org
> http://lists.nycbug.org/mailman/listinfo/talk
>

Apache does this when it's trying to kill off threads. I forget
exactly what brings you to this condition, but check out the MaxSpare,
MinSpare, and all that stuff. Run 'httpd -M' i think to find out
whether you are MPM prefork or the other other one, the knobs mean
different things depending on which module is implemented. mod_perl
shouldn't be invoking /usr/bin/perl as far as I know, so this and the
Apache thing might be not directly related.... check that the cgi
module isn't being used for anything just to clear that out.

-jesse