PPN Hosting / 1-GB.NET Support wrote:
> So did you ever find a solution to this? Any other suggestions?
>
> We've recently been experiencing the same type of problem.. Apache crashes
> under higher loads and exim (working as sendmail) takes over port 80
> stopping apache's restart.
>
> One site said it's a php bug / issue, another is blaming apache. Not sure
> who to believe here now.
>
> I do know we need to get this problem fixed.
I thought someone came forward and said it was a known bug with X as a
solution? Hmm sorta yep, here it is.
http://lists.exim.org/lurker/message/20060417.211007.174ea05d.en.html
The work around is to not use the sendmail style interface but to use
one of the many libraries around that connect to the server over port 25
and go through the whole SMTP conversation. Exim would then never have
the chance to inherit port 80 when Apache crashes.
Either that, or find out what is causing Apache to crash in the first
place. If it's only under high load then it might be caused by the
kernel killing off processes when it's in a panic about running out of
resources.
Check your system logs to see if things are being terminated and if they
are, tune your server to not hit those limits or upgrade it to fit your
needs.
Ted.