WebServer Error - Failed to release SSL session cache lock

Question

I host my ecommerce site with a 3rd party hosting company (LAMP). When I check my error logs I have a lot of these warnings:

[Wed Jul 07 23:39:17 2010] [warn] (43)Identifier removed: Failed to release SSL session cache lock

Does anyone know what is causing this and if it's something I should be worried about? I checked with the hosting company but they didn't know why it was happening.

Answer 1

Probably caused by an SSL process or thread dying uncleanly that held a lock to the session cache. The session cache is used to hold critical security related information that allows for SSL session resumption. Without this feature, SSL server performance will suffer but otherwise is not harmful. If the performance degradation is noticeable you should try to track it down and remedy. Also, if you are OCD like me you will try to track it down no matter what.