Apache child process exited with status 255

Question

After lot of searching, trying, fixing, waiting and crying and before I give up, I want to take the last chance here for this bug...

We're running on Microsoft Windows Server 2012, Apache/2.4.6 (Win64) OpenSSL/1.0.1e PHP/5.5.1.

Periodically, at least 5-10 times within 24 hours, Apache crashing and restarting. Mostly twice. Because PHP crashed.

The whole application is PHP, so configuring php as FastCGI won't solve the problem: Apache will not crash but PHP will.

here some more info:

Windows Event Log:

Faulting application name: httpd.exe, version: 2.4.6.0, time stamp: 0x51e441d6
Faulting module name: php5ts.dll, version: 5.5.1.0, time stamp: 0x51e849b0
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00000000000572d8
Faulting process id: 0xac0
Faulting application start time: 0x01d0a96634f3d129
Faulting application path: C:\Apache24\bin\httpd.exe
Faulting module path: C:\PHP\php5ts.dll
Report Id: 06409cc4-1568-11e5-93ff-d43d7edb03a9
Faulting package full name:
Faulting package-relative application ID: 

Apache Log:

[Thu Jun 18 06:13:44.284810 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 2736:tid 392] AH00428: Parent: child process 2752 exited with status 255 -- Restarting.
[Thu Jun 18 06:13:44.487977 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 2736:tid 392] AH00455: Apache/2.4.6 (Win64) OpenSSL/1.0.1e PHP/5.5.1 configured -- resuming normal operations
[Thu Jun 18 06:13:44.487977 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 2736:tid 392] AH00456: Apache Lounge VC11 Server built: Jul 15 2013 20:45:22
[Thu Jun 18 06:13:44.487977 2015] [core:notice] [pid 2736:tid 392] AH00094: Command line: 'c:\\Apache24\\bin\\httpd.exe -d C:/Apache24'
[Thu Jun 18 06:13:44.487977 2015] [mpm_winnt:notice] [pid 2736:tid 392] AH00418: Parent: Created child process 4408

• In PHP log nothing special and no pattern before crash.
• Also concurrent connections not affecting the problem - it's happens even when we have very few users.
• MySQL? But no errors pointing to this or I looking in wrong place?
• Windows? How to figure out?
• PHP/Apache configuration? Well, what else.. and why?
• Aliens...

The main question is why PHP is crashing?..

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

In my case, nothing more in logs. Only:

 Parent: child process XXXX exited with status 255 -- Restarting

Problem was in redirect code:

<?php
    header('HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified');
    exit();
?>

This code stops apache service and start new processes. But not all time... sometimes worked fine... sometimes crashes :(

Correct code is:

<?php
    header('HTTP/1.1 304 Not Modified');
    die();
?>

More informations about: PHP: Utilizing exit(); or die(); after header("Location: ");

Answer 2

There is a known bug: Whenever a file you include has a filesize of 4096 or more the php module and apache will stopp working. Thats not a joke!