I have suffered from 

/kernel: pid 69000 (httpd), uid 99: exited on signal 8

repeatedly in any php script whose guts wind up calling
rand(). The fix is supposedly fpsetmask(0) instead of
the current code in zend.c, but this would only work
for me if I set apache's MaxRequestsPerChild to one.

As might be expected, this is because the fix, if placed
in zend_startup, is effective ONLY for
the first request served from that httpd (in DSO mode. CGI obviously would not care). If you place
the fpsetmask(0) call at the beginning of zend_activate_modules, subsequent requests will benefit
and the signal 8 crashes cease.