php-fastcgi and memory leaks

[Grzegorz Nosek]

On Mon, Mar 31, 2008 at 01:28:22PM +0100, Phillip B Oldham wrote:
> Yes, all processes, including the parent. I've set-up 3 children and one 
> parent, and all 4 instances slowly grow in size.

Now that is strange. The parent process doesn't do almost anything.
Maybe running under valgrind will provide some insight (though it is
*SLOW*).

> I don't know about non-standard. I'm not using any PECL entensions, but 
> I have custom compiled the php instance on the box to include items such 
> as IMAP support and turn off things that we don't use. My compile 
> options are below:
> 
> ./configure \

(snip)

> Don't know if any of those items are known to cause memory leaks.

In theory, no. In practice, who knows. It is PHP, after all ;)

AFAIK, there is no possibility (apart from very nasty hacks) for
extensions to cause _gradual_ increase in parent's memory usage.
Does the parent process grow at the same rate?

Is php-fcgi the only process that exhibits this behaviour? Maybe there's
something wrong with your system libraries?

Frankly, I have no idea. If you can reproduce the problem in a test
environment, try running php under "valgrind --leak-check=full"

Best regards,
 Grzegorz Nosek