Apache memory consumption

[alan at nytka.org]

Hi,

I've got a dedicated server with a few hundred domains on it and I  
recently noticed that the apache is consuming too much memory. It's  
not a problem for now but it will soon but it will soon be. I was  
wondering if anyone could help me reduce the memory used by apache or  
at least point me to some docs for tuning the web server. Below is an  
excerpt from the `top`:

   PID USERNAME         THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
45816 apache             1  96    0 82456K 69928K select   0:05  1.86% httpd
45607 apache             1  20    0 76732K 64124K lockf    0:07  0.78% httpd
45545 apache             1  20    0 75244K 62656K lockf    0:09  1.51% httpd
45573 apache             1  20    0 73920K 61308K lockf    0:07  0.78% httpd
45829 apache             1  20    0 73920K 61256K lockf    0:03  1.22% httpd
45516 apache             1  20    0 73836K 61244K lockf    0:09  0.54% httpd
45609 apache             1  20    0 73864K 61240K lockf    0:06  1.22% httpd
45610 apache             1  20    0 73656K 61120K lockf    0:05  0.49% httpd
45804 apache             1  96    0 73628K 61096K select   0:05  0.54% httpd
45836 apache             1  20    0 73628K 61048K lockf    0:01  1.12% httpd
30813 root               1  96    0 64372K 51716K select   0:11  0.00% httpd
44633 root               1   4    0 59436K 48040K accept   0:00  0.00% httpd
66060 mysql              6  20    0 54664K 29320K kserel  74:47  0.00% mysqld
45433 psaadm             1   4    0 53680K 23140K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
45413 psaadm             1   4    0 54000K 22832K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
45505 psaadm             1   4    0 52108K 19192K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
45504 psaadm             1   4    0 51852K 18708K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
45526 psaadm             1   4    0 51940K 18484K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
45566 psaadm             1   4    0 51716K 18288K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
   717 popuser            1  96    0 22892K 16396K select   0:14  0.00% perl
45508 psaadm             1   4    0 51160K 16176K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
45503 psaadm             1   4    0 50840K 14248K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
   718 popuser            1  96    0 20820K 13348K select   0:01  0.00% perl
   392 bind               1  96    0  9940K  7396K select   1:21  0.00% named
45245 root               1  96    0  6424K  3760K select   0:01  0.00% proftpd
45830 root               1  96    0  6164K  3504K select   0:00  0.00% proftpd
45506 psaadm             1   4    0 47608K  3420K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd
45507 psaadm             1   4    0 47612K  3408K accept   0:00  0.00% httpsd

Additionally to that the logs are full of such messages:

pid 14073 (httpd), uid 2525: exited on signal 6
pid 14361 (httpd), uid 2525: exited on signal 6
pid 14431 (httpd), uid 2525: exited on signal 6
pid 14898 (httpd), uid 2525: exited on signal 6
pid 20742 (httpd), uid 2525: exited on signal 6
pid 20737 (httpd), uid 2525: exited on signal 6
pid 20959 (httpd), uid 2525: exited on signal 6
pid 21189 (httpd), uid 2525: exited on signal 6

which I think is connected with the memory consumption issue.

The system is running on:

6.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE #0: Thu Nov  3 09:36:13 UTC 2005      
root at x64.samsco.home:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386

Hardware specs are 1GB of RAM and Athlon XP 3800+ dual core.

Thanks for your help.

Cheers,

Alan