apache2's perchild MPM not working under 5.0-RELEASE

[Dominic Marks]

On 16/07/2003 14:07, Jeremy C. Reed wrote:
> The apache2 port build and installed with WITH_MPM=perchild does not work
> for me for DAV and SSL under FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE (i386).
> 
> The port's Makefile even mentions "perchild" as an WITH_MPM option.

If this is going to be broken long-term I'll make it obvious in the port
that it is until such times as it works properly. I also need to do some
testing with the other threaded MPMs and 5's ever-growing collection of
pthread libraries.

> Does anyone use perchild (with DAV or SSL)?
> 
> It is extremely slow and unusable. (Sometimes taking minutes for a DAV
> command, if it even works.) Using prefork works instantly. (I want
> perchild so I can have virtual hosts running with their own user and group
> privileges.)

It would be interesting to see what it's waiting on. You could try
attaching truss (or strace from ports) to one of the perchild processes
(assuming you could identify it) and watch what sort of things it is
doing. You'll need to mount procfs before you can do this on 5.

What is the performance like with general traffic (no DAV, no SSL) ?

> I have read old messages saying perchild didn't work, but would work with
> FreeBSD 5.0.

The apache2 documentation itself states:

"This MPM does not currently work on most platforms. Work is ongoing to
make it functional."

Which doesn't bode well.

> I assume it is a threads issue.

This is possible, I am planning to test apache2 with threads against
libthr and libkse in the next week or so, but if one of the thread
developers wants to speed up the process, I'd appreciate it.

> Does anyone have any suggestions on troubleshooting this further?
> 
> My next step is to try it on a 5.1 system.
> 
> (Should I email freebsd-threads or freebsd-ports instead?)
> 
> Thank you,
> 
>    Jeremy C. Reed
>    http://bsd.reedmedia.net/
> 
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Thanks,
-- 
Dominic
 <dom at cus.org.uk> <dominic.marks at npl.co.uk>