php fcgi does not restart if lighttpd restarts

[Michael]

While using lighttpd on a centos 4.3 installation with kernel 2.6.16.1 (no tweaks to teh kernel). Everytime I made adjustments to php I had to killall php processes in order to restart the php processes to get those updates. Even thought I went and killed all of the php processes I had to restart twice in order to get the php processes started again.

[Scott]

I think this is an issue with php-cgi spawn from lighttpd. When lighttpd restarts, the old lighttpd shuts down the port it listens to so the new process can bind to it. However the old php-cgi parent still binds to the same port (1026 for example), which the new php-cgi cannot bind, that leads to failure to start.

My solution is to use spawn-fcgi even in localhost so you can manage your PHP FastCGI and lighttpd processes independently.

See http://hostingfu.com/article/use-spawn-fcgi-for-lighttpd-php-fastcgi

[Olaf van der Spek]

If you killed all PHP procecsses, the PHP port should be free.

[Yvan]

Same problem here for 1.4.16 (Debian backport). From time to time, php-cgi processes are not linked to lighttpd, so when a restart is initiated, php doesn't suppress its children, and no php process is created again. I must point out the fact that when running php from within a php script (using system('php-cgi ...') or system('/a/php/file/with/good/headers.php')) the process goes directly to a zombie one and stop working at all. I couldn't manage to make it work correctly so far...

[Olaf van der Spek]

Same problem here for 1.4.16 (Debian backport).

Can you try 1.4.18?

I must point out the fact that when running php from within a php script (using system('php-cgi ...') or system('/a/php/file/with/good/headers.php'))

Shouldn't you use php-cli? Running it that way is not CGI.

[masryalex@…]

Same here lighttpd-1.4.18 CentOS 5.1 PHP 5.2.5 even killall php-cgi does nothing and it keeps holding memory, only restarting the server would solve the problem.

[anonymous]

Replying to masryalex@gmail.com:

Same here lighttpd-1.4.18 CentOS 5.1 PHP 5.2.5 even killall php-cgi does nothing and it keeps holding memory, only restarting the server would solve the problem.

try killall -HUP php-cgi