[CentOS] Memory Leak with stock Squirrelmail, PHP, mysql, apache since 5.3

Fri Apr 24 19:27:34 UTC 2009
Rick Barnes <linux at sitevision.com>

James Wilson wrote:
> Since upgrading to 5.3 we have noticed that overnight all 4GB of  
> physical RAM and all 4GB of swap is eaten and the web service  
> unresponsive.  We can still SSH into the machine and restart Apache.   
> This rectifies the issue.  These are production boxes and subject to  
> numerous connections, we are trying to isolate the trigger.  However,  
> the exact same configuration and applications being served under 5.2  
> exhibit no issue.
> 
> I suspect it may be related to this bug, logged with the upstream:
> 
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=497077

I was experiencing similar problems with an x86_64 server after
upgrading to 5.3. While MySQL, Apache and PHP are installed SquirrelMail
was not, nor mail services beyond daily logwatch emails.

Since Apache was serving internal-only sites needed by only a few people
in my department, I found that de-tuning the prefork section httpd.conf
was an acceptable workaround.

None of the other servers I have upgraded to 5.3 have exhibited this
issue, but they are all i386 web servers only and do not mysql
installed. Although they do handle 2-3 orders of magnitude more requests
than the x86_64 server does.

Thanks,
Rick