Description:
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Very quickly the HTTPD processes grow and I can see them 
taking up 5%, then 15%, 30%, 50% CPU. without APC, HTTPD 
processes were always 0%-1%. After a while, the server will 
no longer serve web pages and will need to be restarted. I 
do not know what the exact "error" is because I am not 
technical enough. I can still ping the server.

I use APC for Opcode cache but also for user caching. I have 
set shm_size to 768. Within a few hours user cache grows to 
15,000+ with about 3 hits per second. There will usually be 
about 400mb of memory still free, and about 25% 
fragmentation.

Now that I am aware of the problem, as a temporary solution 
I usually restart Apache a few times per day - this prevents 
the HTTPD processes taking up too much CPU and slowing down 
the pages / blocking pages altogether.

I originally installed APC 3.0.19 and this problem was 
happening much faster. So I upgraded to the latest PHP and 
APC versions. Also, before, I used to cache objects with 25 
minute expiry time. Then I read that APC did not like short 
expiries so I stopped caching these objects. All the objects 
I cache now have 1 week expiry time, so this is not the 
issue.

Any ideas as to what is causing the problem? Is it the type 
/ size / number of objects I am caching? Or a bug in APC?

Thanks for any help!
I'm sorry I can't provide a backtrace, I am not very 
technical and couldn't understand how it is done.. :-(

Mel

PHP is 5.3.2 (not quite right in dropdown)

apc.cache_by_default	On
apc.canonicalize	Off
apc.coredump_unmap	Off
apc.enable_cli	Off
apc.enabled	On
apc.file_md5	Off
apc.file_update_protection	2
apc.filters	no value
apc.gc_ttl	3600
apc.include_once_override	Off
apc.lazy_classes	Off
apc.lazy_functions	Off
apc.max_file_size	1M
apc.mmap_file_mask	/tmp/apc.9PyB6Q
apc.num_files_hint	2048
apc.preload_path	no value
apc.report_autofilter	Off
apc.rfc1867	Off
apc.rfc1867_freq	0
apc.rfc1867_name	APC_UPLOAD_PROGRESS
apc.rfc1867_prefix	upload_
apc.rfc1867_ttl	3600
apc.shm_segments	1
apc.shm_size	768
apc.stat	On
apc.stat_ctime	Off
apc.ttl	7200
apc.use_request_time	On
apc.user_entries_hint	12288
apc.user_ttl	7200
apc.write_lock	On