Bug 157554

Summary: www/apache22: Apache RLimitNPROC does not work as intended because Kernel counts process differently
Product: Ports & Packages Reporter: Patrick Proniewski <patpro>
Component: Individual Port(s)Assignee: freebsd-apache (Nobody) <apache>
Status: Closed FIXED    
Severity: Affects Only Me CC: ohauer
Priority: Normal    
Version: Latest   
Hardware: Any   
OS: Any   
See Also: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=206339

Description Patrick Proniewski 2011-06-03 10:10:09 UTC 
Apache directive RLimitNPROC allows for process limiting.  According to
documentation (http://httpd.apache.org/docs/current/mod/core.html#rlimitnproc ),
it's supposed to limit the number of processes forked by Apache children:
"This applies to processes forked off from Apache children servicing
requests, not the Apache children themselves".

On FreeBSD, Apache Children are taken into account by the kernel when
enforcing RLimitNPROC.  So, for example, it's impossible to run a single
CGI that fork the uname command if RLimitNPROC is set to 10 and if you
have 9 or more httpd processes.

It yields to error logs in messages:

kernel: maxproc limit exceeded by uid 80, please see tuning(7) and login.conf(5).

And it renders the whole concept of RLimitNPROC useless (for Apache)

How-To-Repeat: - install Apache 2.2 on FreeBSD 8.2
- setup Apache with following values:
     StartServers 5
     RLimitNPROC 5
- create a simple CGI script that queries a system command (uname, ls...)
- make a GET request to that CGI
Comment 1 Mark Linimon freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2011-06-09 22:32:44 UTC 
Responsible Changed
From-To: freebsd-bugs->apache

AFAICT this is a bug with the port, not the kernel.
Comment 2 Martin Wilke freebsd_committer freebsd_triage 2014-02-27 15:09:09 UTC 
State Changed
From-To: open->feedback

still a problem?