How to make Apache (2.2.4) less greedy, or Sendmail less polite?

[Olaf Greve]

Hi again,

This time a question from the Apache side of this issue:

 >You'll have to correlate this with HTTP requests apache receives -  
maybe there's a PHP script that's unusually CPU
 >intensive.

Is there any (easy) way to do this in conjunction with specific PIDs  
of stressed httpd instances?
Of course I can take a look at the httpd-access log file, but at  
present it doesn't log the PIDs (which can perhaps be changed by  
changing the log format), but is there an easier way to  
"inspect" (from the prompt) what a specific httpd instance is doing/ 
serving?

Cheers!
Olafo

PS: This morning (and some of the other past few days as well) I took  
a closer look to the server loads, and it looks like during the  
better part of the morning the load is virtually 0%, and around  
midday (or slighlty before?), all of a sudden Apache starts going  
crazy and receives very heavy load. I wonder if this can perhaps be  
some DOS attack, and hence I'd like to see what each of the stressed  
daemon instances is doing exactly...