PHP 5.1.4 and Apache Problems
I know, I am behind the times. PHP 5.3 is almost ready for prime time, but I was still using PHP 5.1.4 I was having some major issues with Apache recently, although I don’t think it was Apache that was the problem. I wasn’t able to diagnose the problem, but I believe connections to MySQL were hanging and causing Apache to choke. It was very sporadic, but as I rolled out a couple sites that made heavy use of MySQL (and not enough use of caching), the problems became more frequent. My server was detecting too high a load on Apache and restarting it a couple of times a day, and every month of so, MySQL would completely choke and require a killall and restart.
My sites get such low traffic amounts, it wasn’t like the server was getting crushed under the load. I upgraded to PHP 5.2.6 and MySQL 5.0.67, and no problems since the upgrade (its only been 48 hours). I have a feeling it was PHP, but don’t know for sure. So if you have PHP 5.1.4 and are running into Apache choking, try upgrading to the latest PHP stable and see if that cures the problem.