"[notice] child pid XXXX exit signal Segmentation fault (11)" in apache error.log

Attach gdb to one of the httpd child processes and reload or continue working and wait for a crash and then look at the backtrace. Do something like this:

$ ps -ef|grep httpd
0     681     1   0 10:38pm ??         0:00.45 /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/httpd -k start
501   690   681   0 10:38pm ??         0:00.02 /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/httpd -k start

...

Now attach gdb to one of the child processes, in this case PID 690 (columns are UID, PID, PPID, ...)

$ sudo gdb
(gdb) attach 690
Attaching to process 690.
Reading symbols for shared libraries . done
Reading symbols for shared libraries ....................... done
0x9568ce29 in accept$NOCANCEL$UNIX2003 ()
(gdb) c
Continuing.

Wait for crash... then:

(gdb) backtrace

Or

(gdb) backtrace full

Should give you some clue what's going on. If you file a bug report you should include the backtrace.

If the crash is hard to reproduce it may be a good idea to configure Apache to only use one child processes for handling requests. The config is something like this:

StartServers 1
MinSpareServers 1
MaxSpareServers 1

A segementation fault is an internal error in php (or, less likely, apache). Oftentimes, the segmentation fault is caused by one of the newer and lesser-tested php modules such as imagemagick or subversion.

Try disabling all non-essential modules (in php.ini), and then re-enabling them one-by-one until the error occurs. You may also want to update php and apache.

If that doesn't help, you should report a php bug.


Have you tried to increase output_buffering in your php.ini?

What does "zend_mm_heap corrupted" mean?