Apache Status

(Main >> Server Status >> Apache Status)

Apache is a web server daemon (httpd). It is responsible for responding to HTTP requests, subsequently serving a web page.

For example, if one of your visitors were to request your domain by typing www.example.com into a web browser, Apache will handle that request by serving the index page for www.example.com.

The status page displays the following information:

• The version of Apache running on the server.
• The time and date the server was built (i.e., installed with Apache).
• The current time and date.
• The time and date the server was last restarted.
• Parent server generation: the number of times you have restarted Apache gracefully, causing it to re-read its configuration file. This occurs, for example, anytime domains are added to your server.
• The amount of time the server has been running.
• Total number of requests and traffic. (Example: Total accesses: 124 - Total Traffic: 9.5 MB)
• The total CPU usage and current load percentage. This tells you what percentage of the server’s processing power is being used.
• The number of requests per second, bytes per second, and kilobytes per request transferred.
• The number of Apache sub-servers, known as workers or children, serving requests.
  • You can count the workers in the list below.
• The number of idle workers.
  • This statistic is located in the bottom line of the heading. (Example: 1 requests currently being processed, 5 idle workers)
• Srv — Worker’s server number.
• PID — Operating system’s process ID.
• Acc — The number of requests this worker has served for: this connection / this child / this slot. (Example: 1/7/7 means 1 request to the connection, 7 to the child, and 7 to the slot.)
• M — Mode of operating.
  • Key for modes of operation:
    • _ — Waiting for connection.
    • S — Starting up.
    • R — Reading request.
    • W — Sending reply.
    • K — Keep alive (read).
    • D — DNS request
    • C — Closing connection.
    • I — Idle worker cleanup.
    • . — Idle worker.
• CPU — The worker’s CPU usage.
• SS — Seconds since the start of the most recent request.
• Req — Time taken to process most recent request in milliseconds.
• Conn — Amount of information transferred to a visitor in Kilobytes.
• Child — Information transferred by the worker in Megabytes.
• Slot — Total Megabytes transferred by this slot.
• Client — The IP address of the user requesting data.
• VHost — The domain name of the server requesting data.
• Request — The type of request received by your server. This column is likely to contain the following terms:
  • Get — Indicates that Apache is downloading data.
  • Post — Indicates that Apache is passing information to the server.

Apache dummy requests

Apache occasionally needs to wake processes listening for new connections. To do so, it uses dummy requests. A dummy request is an HTTP request that Apache sends to itself. These requests, when used without SSL, appear in access log files with the remote address set to the local host (127.0.0.1 for IPv4 or ::1 for IPv6). These dummy requests are a normal part of Apache's functionality that can be ignored.

Apache's dummy requests cannot use SSL. It is possible that servers with hosts that use SSL can receive noise in the log file that resembles the following:

[info] [client ::1] Connection to child 6 established (server localhost:443)
[info] Seeding PRNG with 656 bytes of entropy
[info] [client ::1] SSL library error 1 in handshake (server localhost:443)
[info] SSL Library Error: 336027900 error:140760FC:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_CLIENT_HELLO:unknown protocol speaking not SSL to HTTPS port!?
[info] [client ::1] Connection closed to child 6 with abortive shutdown (server localhost:443)

On a lightly loaded server, WHM's Apache Status feature ( Main >> Server Status >> Apache Status) will frequently show a high number of dummy connections. This occurs because the feature simply shows the last request to a worker slot, which is typically a dummy request waking a process so that it can be reaped.

It may also appear that Apache is handling a high number of OPTIONS requests when in fact the workers are simply idle.

WHM's Apache Status Page