Cannot allocate memory: couldn't spawn child process
 

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/forum...splay.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/forum...splay.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

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

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?

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?

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