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

[Vincent Deffontaines]

On 11/11/2010 11:11, Ondřej Surý wrote:

Hi,

Thank you for your prompt reply.

> I think that overriding the system setup would be confusing for our
> users, they will change it at one place and it will get overwritten by
> php5 no matter what the user has done.

This is a problem because debian apache2 packages set 
MaxRequestsPerChild to 0, while the default set by the httpd 
distribution is 10000 for very good reasons.
I however know that I shall not convince the apache2 packagers to change 
that setting in apache2.conf, so I will not even try to.

Setting that value to 0 is a bad idea. It is something one should do on 
their own servers, after validating they have no memory leak at all. So 
forcing it back to a sane value looks like the only way for me when 
modules like PHP are enabled.
I understand your point about user confusion, but the problem "leaking 
default configuration" seems a bigger problem to me than the "user 
confused" one. Most users won't look at the apache2/php configuration at 
all if they can avoid it, especially core configuration like 
MaxRequestsPerChild.

I must also tell that debian's apache config files are splitted and 
confusing to many users, as a matter of fact. I am trying to fix the 
problem, respecting debian's rules, and see no other way than setting 
back the default to the vanilla recommended value when php is loaded.

Question : would you accept to set a separate libapache2-mod-php5 config 
file, such as :
/etc/apache2/conf.d/php5-performance.conf, containing :
==============
#Setting back the MaxRequestsPerChild to a sane value when PHP is in use
MaxRequestsPerChild 10000
==============

I insist this will not hurt existing configurations, it will only make 
things better by restarting httpd threads/processes once every 10000 
requests.


 >
 > However adding a text to README.Debian (or separate README) would be
 > beneficial. Would you be willing to provide the text?

If the above is not acceptable, I suggest adding these :
* For the README.Debian file
http://people.apache.org/~gryzor/README.Debian.additions.txt
* For the mods-available/php5.conf file
http://people.apache.org/~gryzor/php5.conf.additions

But if so, I have no doubt that users will not read and will keep asking 
for the same support as before.

Regards,

Vincent