Cannot allocate memory: couldn't spawn child process

[brad3260]

Hello, I'm a webmaster for a site running vb 3.8.1 and we're having problems with internal server errors. It happens when the forum gets busy and I'm getting the following message in the error log
[Sat Feb 28 05:57:56 2009] [error] [client 24.128.205.158] (12)Cannot allocate memory: couldn't create child process: 12: php5.cgi, referer: http://www.chins-n-hedgies.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=30
[Sat Feb 28 05:57:56 2009] [error] [client 24.128.205.158] (12)Cannot allocate memory: couldn't spawn child process: /dh/cgi-system/php5.cgi, referer: http://www.chins-n-hedgies.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=30

I have done everything to lighten the memory use that I can find but still having problems. Their forum is pretty busy, in the last seven days their home page alone has gotten over 20,000 hits. I have them on a virtual private server with 500MB of ram. My question is, should I need more ram with that amount of traffic?

Any help is appreciated

[Lynne]

You may want to post over on vb.com in their Server Configuration forum for help optimizing your server configuration.

[snakes1100]

You shouldn't be running apache/php as a cgi, you should set it to a fast_cgi, what settings are in use for the cgi process?

ie what do you have set for the cgi process itself, process count, limit, timeout etc?

[brad3260]

I think I just enabled fast cgi, how can I know for sure? I do have shell access if that helps. I also read you need to edit the code for fast cgi, is vb already compatible with it?

I don't know what those variables are set to, could you tell me how I would find out?

[Marco van Herwaarden]

Please post in the server configuration forum on vBulletin.com.