[kforge-dev] Possible memory leak problem related to modpython

[John Bywater]

Rufus Pollock wrote:

> I've been noticing increasing load problems after deploying the latest 
> KForge release and its got to the point where the apache server 
> requires a daily reboot. After investigating it looks like a (mild) 
> memory leak which starts to cause load problems after half a day or 
> more of heavy usage. After a bit of investigation I believe this 
> relates to one of bugs mentioned on:
>
> http://www.modpython.org/pipermail/mod_python/2005-July/018617.html
>
> Specifically i think it may be the second related to the use of 
> PythonOption ((I'm using Debian stable whose libapache2-mod-python is 
> v. 3.1.4):
>
> http://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MODPYTHON-60
>
> (This has only cropped now I think because kforge 0.12 produces 
> substantially more cases of PythonOption directives compared to kforge 
> 0.11 and knowledgeforge.net is now handling heavier loads).
>
> The obvious solution here is to upgrade modpython to >= v3.2.7 (3.2.10 
> is available in testing and unstable on debian). I haven't yet tried 
> this because the upgrade on Debian at least result in dependency 
> cascade resulting in the upgrade of a significant portion of the 
> system. However I plan to try this soon and once I do I'll let the 
> list know how it turns out.


I recommend you don't do that, because you will end up without a stable 
Debian system. You always want to use stable Debian for a production 
server, for several reasons.

Instead, I recommend building your own Apache binary, then building 
mod_python (and the other modules needed by KForge), against that.

This begins the application service provision story, but isn't the whole 
story.

In the meantime, why not regularly restart your apache from a cron job?

John.