PHP Processes reaching limit along with FastCGI timeouts

Question

I have a problem similar to http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1168384/how-to-troubleshoot-php-processes, but with a twist. We have a couple of managed servers that recently migrated to FastCGI. Since then we've been having problems.

We have a content management system at a central place that we manage all our sites with. All the sites run on the same managed server. So basically its one PHP script that generates pages on the same server. The catch comes in where it works perfectly on some, and gives FCGI timeout errors on others. At the same time our support is saying that the PHP processes heap up to their limit and then causes Apache to stop working.

I'm convinced this is a fault on their side, but would like to get my side clean too. Anyway have any suggestions where I can start looking for what's going wrong? I know it's a really broad question, but any help or pointers would be great.

Thanks

Just to add to that, here's a PS printout from support:

happyh   13853 21556  0 01:04 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
happyh   13869 13853  0 01:04 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
mamedc   13914 21556  0 05:14 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
wealthf  13947 21556  0 01:21 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
wealthf  13961 13947  0 01:21 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
mamedc   14032 13914  0 05:14 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
lookgrt  14157 21556  0 04:47 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
lookgrt  14178 14157  0 04:47 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
wolfie   14262 21556  0 01:08 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
wolfie   14276 14262  0 01:08 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
yaukrl   14352 21556  0 01:21 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
yaukrl   14361 14352  0 01:21 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
itpays2  14538 21556  0 01:33 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
itpays2  14547 14538  0 01:33 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
brichmbx 14732 21556  0 04:47 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
brichmbx 14803 14732  0 04:47 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi
greatl   14969 21556  0 01:00 ?        00:00:00 /usr/bin/php5-cgi

Answer 1

I still don't know what the exact cause of this was, but I think it had to do with badly implemented PHP pconnect() functions (which I didn't write..)