How can i tell how much RAM a php application is using and why it crashing Apache?

[mikie46]

I'v been writing a php application for a about 5 weeks now. Granted, im not the most efficient programmer in the world since its my first php application but I'd like to know how i can gauge the amount of ram my application is running and why it seems that it crashes Apache sometimes.

Yesterday, my webserver was down for over 3hrs because i didnt know that Apache has suffered a Signal 11. I looked around in the logs and it seems that Apache crashed out a few times while i was testing and debugging my script.

Here is what i think caused it. Taken from my logs.

Oct 6 00:03:26 la1008 kernel: pid 39763 (php), uid 1007: exited on signal 10

So now im trying to figure out what it would be as im not seeing any errors when running the script but that doesnt mean that it not eating up ram or something like that.

Iv tried to split up as much of my routines as possible by placing them in include files but the main php script is already 65k. Would it help if i split more of the code into include files as opposed to placing the code into one or two php scripts? Does this help with reducing ram usage and speed or is it something else?

I want to get the application finished but now im wondering what i should do about this.

Any pointers on what i should be do?

[sneakyimp]

The size of your script has little to do with how much memory it consumes. This tiny script will eventually use too much memory whenever it gets run:

while (true) {
  $myArray[] = rand(1,9999999999);
}

I'm not sure what signal 10 is - maybe google it? Your script could have an endless loop problem or something.

If not, you need to think about which parts of your script increase the amount of memory you need. These would be the parts that add items to an array or increase the size of a string or read in a big file. Anywhere variables get defined, you are increasing your memory usage.

[evan_k]

mod_top might be useful for you, in determining exactly where the resource hog is.

[sneakyimp]

mod_top looks awesome.