Apache spawns too many processes ( Memory leaks )

[RobertNic]

Hello All,

I`m facing an issue on a plesk server of mine and I`m afraid it`s a little way over my head

My monitoring started a few hours ago to report that I have to many processes on my plesk server
after I`ve investigated I saw that I have all the time almost 300 apache processes

top output
1642 apache 15 0 333m 32m 4288 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.67 httpd
11592 apache 16 0 333m 32m 4272 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.64 httpd
11676 apache 16 0 333m 32m 4216 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.56 httpd
11482 apache 16 0 333m 32m 4208 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.61 httpd
11422 apache 16 0 333m 32m 4116 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.64 httpd
11451 apache 18 0 335m 34m 4112 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.58 httpd
11472 apache 18 0 335m 34m 4112 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.51 httpd
11802 apache 16 0 333m 32m 4108 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.57 httpd
10095 apache 16 0 332m 31m 4104 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.53 httpd
11410 apache 16 0 333m 32m 4104 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.51 httpd
11595 apache 16 0 335m 34m 4100 S 0.0 0.6 0:00.53 httpd
11803 apache 18 0 334m 33m 4092 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.59 httpd
11401 apache 16 0 333m 32m 3976 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.42 httpd
11464 apache 16 0 344m 43m 3956 S 0.0 0.7 0:00.48 httpd
20281 root 18 0 97028 5356 2864 S 0.0 0.1 0:01.55 sshd
11927 postfix 18 0 56520 3612 2804 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 smtp
11599 apache 16 0 331m 28m 2444 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.05 httpd
11656 apache 16 0 331m 28m 2428 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.07 httpd
9409 popuser 15 0 113m 51m 2364 S 0.0 0.9 0:00.35 spamd
11932 postfix 15 0 56352 3088 2364 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 cleanup
11926 postfix 18 0 56156 2884 2136 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 trivial-rewrite
9408 root 15 0 112m 50m 2100 S 0.0 0.8 0:04.64 spamd
9635 postfix 15 0 56224 2764 2024 S 0.0 0.0 0:09.96 qmgr
17960 named 18 0 162m 6284 1992 S 0.0 0.1 0:33.19 named
11551 apache 15 0 331m 28m 1968 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.03 httpd
10062 apache 16 0 331m 28m 1964 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.11 httpd
11445 apache 16 0 331m 28m 1960 S 0.0 0.5 0:00.04 httpd
9639 postfix 15 0 56012 2568 1956 S 0.0 0.0 0:01.21 tlsmgr

netstat -n|grep :7080|cut -c 45-|cut -f 1 -d ':'|sort|uniq -c|sort -nr|more
299 "server Publicip :
netstat -n|grep :80|cut -c 45-|cut -f 1 -d ':'|sort|uniq -c|sort -nr|more
6 209.91.107.159
2 74.14.69.164
1 66.249.64.37
1 24.114.72.202
1 173.206.105.87


after I`ve run this commands I assume all the processes are internally created

Is there any way to identify what is responsible of this ?
I can only think it may be a bad script or something on a domain that I host
Any kind of suggestion regarding of how I can identify this would be very much appreciated !

 

[InderS]

Have you installed nginx on your server ? And which port it's using ?

/etc/init.d/nginx status

 

[RobertNic]

Yes it was installed already , by default port 7080 is the port that apache is listening at and 80 is the port that nginx listens at however I managed to fix this by uninstalling and reinstalling nginx although I haven`t found the exact problem that was triggering this .. after the re installation of Nginx the multiple apache processes were not being spawned anymore ..
But as I said .. I wasn`t able to find the exact source of the problem ..
Thank you InderS for your response btw !