Apache Error – Child pid xx Exit Signal Segmentation Fault (11)

One of our servers Apache was going down frequently and while looking at the Apache error logs we found the following errors.

tail -f /usr/local/apache/logs/error_logs

[Fri May 07 10:42:08 2010] [notice] child pid 30356 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
[Fri May 07 10:42:09 2010] [notice] SIGHUP received.  Attempting to restart
[Fri May 07 10:42:09 2010] [notice] seg fault or similar nasty error detected in the parent process

After investigating a little we manage to find the problem was with PHP failure.

php -v

PHP 5.2.9 (cli) (built: Jan 27 2010 15:56:41)
Copyright (c) 1997-2009 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.2.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2009 Zend Technologies
with the ionCube PHP Loader v3.3.7, Copyright (c) 2002-2009, by ionCube Ltd., and
with Zend Optimizer v3.3.9, Copyright (c) 1998-2009, by Zend Technologies

Segmentation fault (core dumped)

Solution:

The core problem was with XCache installed and we have to remove XCache settings on the server from php.ini . Please make sure you are using the correct XCache version which is compatible with Zend Optimizer as XCache do have problems with Zend Optimizer.