Topic: General question about apache5ts.dll

[matt_bernhardt]

I have a webserver on which PHP has recently become unstable, and I am looking for guidance.

The server has run well for some time (more than a year), but starting from an upgrade I put in place last week there have been frequent crashes. The old stack was:

Windows Server 2008
Apache 2.2.17 (from apache.org)
PHP 5.2.13 (VC6)
APC (I believe 3.1.5)
mod_ssl/openssl (not sure the version)

MySQL is on a separate server.

After the upgrade, I had

Windows Server 2008
Apache 2.2.21 (from apachelounge)
PHP 5.3.8 (VC9, thread-safe)
APC 3.1.7-dev
mod_ssl/openssl 0.9.8r

The behavior I noticed was that, while APC reported better-than-ever caching and the server response was greatly improved, it was also unstable - lasting at most half an hour. I also started seeing intermittent errors in FireFox talking about unexpected session requests via SSL.

By this point, I've downgraded some versions slightly, so that I am not on:

Windows Server 2008
Apache 2.2.20 (from apachelounge)
PHP 5.3.8 (VC9, thread-safe)
APC 3.1.5-dev
mod_ssl/openssl 0.9.8r

The SSL problems in Firefox appear to be resolved, and I'm still getting good APC cache performance. The server's stability has improved, but not enough - it crashes every few hours.

When I look at the server's error logs, I see a reference to "faulting module php5ts.dll" - and in Googling this portion of the error I see all manner of threads, some going back to 2007, wherein people talk about difficulties getting a server to start for the first time. However, this is not my problem - so rather than thread-jack an old discussion, I wanted to ask this:

Am I right in assuming that the "faulting module php5ts.dll" is basically only telling me that PHP has crashed, and not Apache? That would match what I've at times observed, which is that after my site becomes unresponsive, I can still get a TXT file served by Apache.

Assuming that to be true, what else should I be looking for to troubleshoot this problem? I'm reaching the end of my leeway to have this resolved, but don't feel like I really understand the root cause of the problem. I've checked my PHP error log and see warnings, but no errors. I've been following up on those warnings, but haven't been able to isolate a cause yet. The Apache logs aren't particularly helpful, or perhaps I'm not reading them correctly.

I don't want to downgrade back to the previous stack, as several projects and our security policy will require PHP 5.3.x.

Many thanks for any suggestions or references - I apologize if this is a FAQ and I missed it in my research before posting.

[Smitty]

We had tons of these crashes when using the module, TS version of PHP.

We used the PHP 5.2.x series for years with no crashes, but as soon as we tried to upgrade to PHP 5.3 we started experiencing tons of crashes with php5ts.dll. We tried various configuration changes all summer and could never get it stable.

Switching to FastCGI and NTS PHP fixed it. We are running now with no problems and no crashes.