Member Avatar for mine2be

I am running an early version of linux server with no GUI and about a month ago my web page stops responding at least once a day. I can still ssh to the server and when I try to lynx I get no response on the box. The same from a remote PC. I see nothing in the logs that I can point to the problem. The software was installed by some friends I was working with a while back. I can get around linux but do not want to start from scatch. I am running apache. Would appreciate any help I can get.
Thanks!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Eico

Dani AI

Generated

Practical, low‑effort checks and a short workflow for intermittent Apache outages like this — complements ’s note about firewall/port forwarding and answers ’s call for more data.

Start with quick state checks (run as root or with sudo):

# Apache process + config test
ps aux | egrep 'apache2|httpd' 
apachectl configtest 2>&1

# Is Apache listening?
netstat -tulpn | egrep ':80|:443' || ss -ltnp | egrep ':80|:443'

# Quick HTTP probes (local vs public IP)
curl -v http://127.0.0.1/
curl -v http://$(hostname -I | awk '{print $1}')/

# Logs, disk, memory, kernel messages
tail -n 200 /var/log/apache2/error.log /var/log/httpd/error_log /var/log/messages /var/log/syslog
df -h; df -i
free -m; ps aux --sort=-rss | head -n 10
dmesg | egrep -i 'oom|out of memory|segfault'

How to read the results and next steps:

  • If Apache processes are absent but SSH stays up, Apache is dying. Check error logs and dmesg for crashes or OOM kills. Increase logging (temporarily set LogLevel to debug) to capture the failure.
  • If Apache is running but not accepting connections, the socket may be full (MaxClients/MaxRequestWorkers or file‑descriptor limits). Inspect Apache MPM settings and ulimit -n. For older Apache look for MaxClients; newer releases use MaxRequestWorkers.
  • If many TIME_WAIT/CLOSE_WAIT sockets appear, examine KeepAlive settings and client behavior; consider tuning or moving to a worker/event MPM.
  • If failures are periodic, inspect cron jobs, backup scripts, logrotate, or automated firewall updates that could stop or block httpd at regular intervals.

A compact set of diagnostic outputs that helps others troubleshoot: OS + kernel, Apache version, output of the ps and netstat/ss commands above, the last 200 lines of Apache error log, df -h/df -i, and crontab -l plus contents of /etc/cron.*. Make configuration backups before changing settings and perform restarts in a maintenance window.

Recommended Answers

All 4 Replies

Member Avatar for Eico

Well, there can be many things going wrong. First you need to identify if the problem is hardware or software related. If you have a router/firewall, is it blocking access on that port? Is port forwarding set up correctly? Have you noticed anything fishy in your apache configuration?

Member Avatar for I, Brian

You're really going to need to give more information for any really useful help to be forthcoming.

Also, ask your friends what they may have changed on your machine - wouldn't be surprised is someone tweaked something small that you didn't know about.

Member Avatar for i686-linux

I think this thread is dead. Anyone agree? This is the person's only post since October (when they signed up)

Member Avatar for Eico

yeah, I agree

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