Hi,

I had a really strange problem with apache. I have several php scripts
that call shell commands. A growing number of them were not working. When
it would call a shell command, the process would die. I thought it was a
problem with a php script, and tried rewriting it, but it didn't change
anything. I had several people look at it, and they said it was a
permissions issue, but apache would run another php script that called
the same commands. So, I restarted apache, and the problems went away.
What troubles me the most about this is that I just restarted the server
only 2 days before, and it was using way too much memory. Infact, I
thought maybe the system was compromised, but running rkhunter yielded
nothing. Once again, apache is using more memory than it did before, but
the problems have not returned. I must say that I am a little bit worried
that they will. It almost acts like I am running mod_perl, but am not. I
do have php-apc installed, but it is commented out in php.ini. Also, I
was wondering if something like this could be caused by sessions.

System info: NetBSD 1.5.3, apache-1.3.27nb3, ap-php-4.2.3,
php-apc-1.1.0.1, php-session-4.2.3, and php-mysql-4.2.3.

Any ideas?

Thanks,
Al