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I'm running Apache 2 in worker mode with PHP FastCGI. I've read that due to the nature of long-running processes, FastCGI may require some periodic process maintenance.

What is meant by periodic process maintenance?

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Why don't you ask whoever wrote what you read? We can only guess at the meaning and motivation of the recommendation -- even more so since you haven't cited a source. – womble Apr 2 '12 at 22:43
Yeeeeah... as someone who does a lot of high-volume Magento hosting, all I can say about that article is facepalm. – womble Apr 3 '12 at 1:45

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"Periodic process maintenance" sounds like a euphemism for "restart."

Because the processes are long-lived, memory leaks and other nasties can build up over time to cause the processes to consume more resources than they really need. Periodic restarts will clear that out.

Don't create a cron job for this quite yet. Monitor the memory use of the processes and schedule restarts based on reality instead of some cargo-cult inspired schedule. It might not even be needed in your environment.

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Yeah that's what I was afraid of. We do run into some issues where an Apache restart solves the problem. Periodic restarts are a workable short term solution. I think I need to look into a better platform. Thanks Charles! – mattmac Apr 2 '12 at 22:53
There are at least two FastCGI modules for Apache, as well as some new options in 2.4. There's also many ways to power the PHP side of things. You may find a mix that works well for you, rather than falling back to mod_php. – Charles Apr 3 '12 at 0:20

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