Topic: Slow reload/restart/-S on some servers

[randomwhitetrash]

Hi,

I need help with debugging a problem that happens on 2 out of our 4 servers. We run Apache 2.4.7 on Ubuntu 14.04.

Each server host multiple sites, all with SSL - mostly same certificate but there are also custom certificates for some of t he sites. Now, the problem is it takes about 40 seconds to reload Apache configuration. On 2 of the servers. Used to happen on 3 of them but then suddenly for no reason I can pinpoint one of the servers (and actually one that has most conf files usually about 300) started working as expected - reloading config takes 2-3 sec now.

4th server never had any problems and even if I load it with 100 conf files it still works fine.

How do I debug what takes Apache so long to process? What I see is just nothing and then after 40 sec it says [OK] or shows me list of hosts if I use -S option.

I tried comparing configs, all look the same. Removed some of the certificates/sites and on 2 affected servers time just decreases more or less proportionally.

One more thing to mention is that when I do reload and it takes 40 sec, if I would to do same thing again right after it take 1 sec to reload. Then if I wait a minute or so I am back to circa 40 sec.

Error logs contain nothing of use:

OK server:
[Tue Apr 11 06:23:32.814032 2017] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 11404] AH00173: SIGHUP received. Attempting to restart
[Tue Apr 11 06:23:34.793241 2017] [ssl:warn] [pid 11404] AH02292: Init: Name-based SSL virtual hosts only work for clients with TLS server name indication support (RFC 4366)
[Tue Apr 11 06:23:34.798864 2017] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 11404] AH00163: Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.21 OpenSSL/1.0.1f configured -- resuming normal operations
[Tue Apr 11 06:23:34.798896 2017] [core:notice] [pid 11404] AH00094: Command line: '/usr/sbin/apache2'

Slow server (notice timestamps):
[Mon Apr 10 14:52:41.645822 2017] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 9248] AH00173: SIGHUP received. Attempting to restart
[Mon Apr 10 14:53:27.413158 2017] [ssl:warn] [pid 9248] AH02292: Init: Name-based SSL virtual hosts only work for clients with TLS server name indication support (RFC 4366)
[Mon Apr 10 14:53:27.418266 2017] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 9248] AH00163: Apache/2.4.7 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.5.9-1ubuntu4.21 OpenSSL/1.0.1f configured -- resuming normal operations
[Mon Apr 10 14:53:27.418313 2017] [core:notice] [pid 9248] AH00094: Command line: '/usr/sbin/apache2'

How to find the cause of this?

P.S. -e debug or -e info does not how anything useful either...

[James Blond]

How is the load on that server?