[CentOS] Apache won't start, semaphores exhausted

[Jim Perrin]

On 10/4/05, Fong Vang <sudoyang at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 10/4/05, Craig White <craigwhite at azapple.com> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2005-10-04 at 17:45 -0700, Fong Vang wrote:
> > > One of our systems run Apache 2.0.52 (httpd-2.0.52-12.2.ent.centos4
> > > rpm).  The kernel we're running is 2.6.9-11.ELsmp.  After a few weeks
> > > of uptime, Apache refuses to start with the following error in
> > > error.log:
> > >
> > >     [crit] (28)No space left on device: mod_jk: could not create jk_log_lock
> > >
> > > With Apache not running, there're a lot of semaphores left behind by
> > > Apache, e.g.:
> > >
> > > ------ Semaphore Arrays --------
> > > key        semid      owner      perms      nsems
> > > 0x00000000 98304      root      600        1
> > > 0x00000000 131073     apache    600        1
> > > 0x00000000 163842     apache    600        1
> > > 0x00000000 196611     apache    600        1
> > > 0x00000000 229380     apache    600        1
> > > 0x00000000 786437     root      600        1


It's not an apache issue exactly. We had a similar issue with a third
party authentication system. Somthing in it doesn't clean up after
itself like it should. I'd recommend looking at the java code, or
looking at what your webserver is running that's not stock. It could
be bad something in java that's being done outside of apache
executable, but as the apache user.
Our vendor released an upgrade of the auth system that seems to have
fixed our issue, so hopefully there's a fix for yours as well.

--
Jim Perrin
System Administrator - UIT
Ft Gordon & US Army Signal Center