ini_set('memory_limit') causing php to crash

Question

I have no idea why or how this came to be, but for some odd reason PHP scripts on my server, once they utilize ini_set trying to influence the memory_limit setting, cause the script to completely crash. No error messages, no nothing. If i call the script through the browser, all i get is a blank page.

Any hints on this?

Update:

running 'free' returns

           total       used       free     shared    buffers     cached
Mem:       8190820    7922056     268764          0     565124    6598656
-/+ buffers/cache:     758276    7432544
Swap:      2102456          0    2102456

Is something hogging my memory?

running ps aux |grep apache gives me 'ERROR: Unsupported option (BSD syntax)'

Checking manually i found a whole bunch of lines refering to:

/usr/sbin/apache2 -k start

All at about 0.3% memory usage and owned by 'www-data'.

The scary part is that none of the processes listed by 'ps aux' uses more than 0.8% of the memory. And if i add up all the percentages listed, i never arrive at where i should according to what 'free' is telling me.

Nothing substantial but also nothing specific. But it doesnt matter if its 10M ot 100M. In any case my memory_limit is set (serverwide) to 4096M - i know that's quite brutal, but it shouldnt be a problem, right? — SquareCat, Mar 30 '12 at 19:53
take a look at your apache error log files, there's bound to be something in there if the script is dying. — Brad Harris, Mar 30 '12 at 19:53
ini_set is enabled and works (for example on setting display_errors), but good point checking it. — SquareCat, Mar 30 '12 at 19:54
I checked the logs before - there is really nothing in there. — SquareCat, Mar 30 '12 at 19:54
kinda grasping at straws... does anything on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1982404/php-cli-script-ignoring-memory-limit-crashing-at-much-lower-number-than-limit help? — Scott M., Mar 30 '12 at 20:00
Im running php5 as apache module. Regarding the other article - ive seen it, checked through, but the issue does not seem related. One thing i might add is that my server also incorporates the suhosin patch with php.. — SquareCat, Mar 30 '12 at 20:08
In this case, can you please post `ps aux |grep apache` as well as `free` to see how much memory is free/available ? — Pierre-Olivier, Mar 30 '12 at 20:32
I think the server can't allocate the amount of memory you want and stop PHP execution. — Gabriel Santos, Mar 30 '12 at 20:37
Even running ini_set('memory_limit','2M'); will cause a crash. Pierre-Olivier: good point. I'll post the results in a seperate answer. — SquareCat, Mar 30 '12 at 20:51

score 0 · Answer 1 · answered Jun 20 '13 at 07:45

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try with this code:

ini_set('memory_limit', '-1');

answered Jun 20 '13 at 07:45

PHP

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 30 '12 at 20:28

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I seem to remember there being a problem with requesting anything over 2GB. I think 2GB is the magic cut-off in at least some versions of PHP.

answered Mar 30 '12 at 20:28

Andrew Kandels

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I don't think is PHP related, more like a server has limited RAM resource allocated to user that executing the process (web or cli) – ajreal Mar 30 '12 at 20:32
I don't think this is the case because the error occurs regardless of the amount of memory being allocated. Another thing that i noticed is that on some requests i will get a "connection reset" error from the server. – SquareCat Mar 30 '12 at 20:46

ini_set('memory_limit') causing php to crash

2 Answers2