PHP server "stuttering", freezes server

Question

Hello All,

We have a particular problem here on one of our production machine, which is running a PHP application.

We have an AJAX call that is only called at one location in the code. However, at any given time, when I have a look at the PHP activity file in Linux (suphp_log), I see that when the server freezes (for a couple of minutes), it's because this specific ajax request (file_ajax.php) is called 30-40 times per second on a 5 minutes range.

I have absolutely no idea how could this query be call that amount of times. It's called only only in Javascript when the page is loaded and I really doubt someones designs to hit reload 30-40 times per minute on client-side.

Do you know any history of such problems, where the PHP server starts "stuttering" ?

Answer 1

Maybe you can look at your Apache acess log and look for the file_ajax.php calls. :)

Answer 2

I really doubt the problem is on the php side, it is far more propable that your client side javascript is buggy and under some conditions repeats the request (i.e. if the callback of the request somehow starts a new request, i.e. if the server didn't return an ok, restart the request => server returns error again => restart request => [...], after 5 minutes the browser cancels because it detects infinite recursion or timeout)

Answer 3

Debugging the ajax request might give you the reason why it is happening so.