Issue
For some reasons unknow to me, Apache is crashing.
This is the apache log at the moment of the crash:
[Sat Jun 02 02:38:05.196006 2018] [mpm_prefork:emerg] [pid 1122] (43)Identifier removed: AH00144: couldn't grab the accept mutex
[Sat Jun 02 02:38:05.196006 2018] [mpm_prefork:emerg] [pid 1116] (43)Identifier removed: AH00144: couldn't grab the accept mutex
[Sat Jun 02 02:38:05.198767 2018] [mpm_prefork:emerg] [pid 1115] (43)Identifier removed: AH00144: couldn't grab the accept mutex
[Sat Jun 02 02:38:05.199523 2018] [mpm_prefork:emerg] [pid 3924] (43)Identifier removed: AH00144: couldn't grab the accept mutex
[Sat Jun 02 02:38:05.204189 2018] [mpm_prefork:emerg] [pid 1937] (43)Identifier removed: AH00144: couldn't grab the accept mutex
[Sat Jun 02 02:38:05.207362 2018] [mpm_prefork:emerg] [pid 1120] (43)Identifier removed: AH00144: couldn't grab the accept mutex
[Sat Jun 02 02:38:06.057310 2018] [core:alert] [pid 1099] AH00050: Child 1115 returned a Fatal error... Apache is exiting!
[Sat Jun 02 02:38:06.057483 2018] [:emerg] [pid 1099] AH02818: MPM run failed, exiting
The last thing I did on the server lately was to install certbot to general HTTPS certificates for my sites.
Solution
I was experiencing the same error on Ubuntu 17.10 with Apache 2.4.27.
It appears to have to do with Apache talking to the OS about file locking. When I went into /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
and added Mutex flock
to the Mutex section (near the ServerRoot section), it seems to have solved the problem.
Unfortunately, all I can say is that this uses the flock() function (a system call?) to handle file locking. Per https://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/core.html#mutex
So it's a bit of a black magic fix in that I personally am not familiar enough with Apache's file locking behavior to say why it works, and I can only say it works because the Apache crash seems to have stopped, but only thus far. Nevertheless, it may help you and seems fairly low-risk.
Answered By - Sean Hogge