Topic: GracefulShutdownTimeout setting is doing nothing

[deepwell]

Hi all!

we have an issue with Apache in connection to long running WebSocket connections and graceful reloads initiated by logrotate.

Whenever logrotate initiates the graceful reload (every morning), all Apache workers currently handling open WebSocket connections go into 'G' state and - as the WebSocket connections stay open (which is their primary purpose!) - stay that way. This puts the whole Apache process that worker belongs to (we are using event MPM) into a state of having some workers in 'G' state and the rest not accepting new connections.

Usually that means that at least one Apache process ends up in that state every day - and after a few days we reach ServerLimit, the scoreboards is full and we get a "AH00485: scoreboard is full, not at MaxRequestWorkers".

Easy fix: Just set `GracefulShutdownTimeout` to something not Zero and Apache should wait that amount of seconds for the 'G' state workers to finish and if they don't, simply kill them and continue the reload.

At least that is what
https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/mpm_common.html#GracefulShutdownTimeout
suggests IMHO.

But in fact it seems that `GracefulShutdownTimeout` does not do anything!

Even if setting this to just a few seconds, the 'G' state workers stay in that state forever and the hole Apache process is useless (and soon the whole Apache server)...


Did I misinterpret the documentation?

Is there any other way to make Apache not wait forever for WebSocket connections to be closed before finishing a graceful reload? Without killing also "normal" connections!

Does this make Apache totally unusable as a reverse proxy for WebSocket connections?