[php-maint] Performance/stability suggestion for debian's php packaging

[Vincent Deffontaines]

Greetings,

I am writing to you as a modest Apache commiter, and above all as a 
support volunteer for #httpd on IRC.
It is a fact that PHP often leaks memory, and I see many users on #httpd 
asking how to solve this issue.
The only fix I can offer them is to set MaxRequestsPerchild to a non 0 
value, as this restarts apache2 children periodically.

My suggestion to you, PHP debian packagers, is very simple :
How about adding a non zero MaxRequestsPerChild value in 
/etc/apache2/mods-available/php5.conf ? This would override the 0 
setting in apache2.conf, only when PHP is installed. I believe a value 
like 10000 would be of very little impact for people having no problem, 
and would clear problems for most others before they even notice it.

If this is not an option, I suggest adding comments in php5.conf, in 
order to make it easy for people with PHP problems to set 
MaxRequestsPerchild to a non zero value on their installation.

Please let me know what you think about this suggestion,

Best regards,

Vincent Deffontaines
Happy Debian user
Httpd commiter