APM php-agent causes core dumps

Products

• CA Application Performance Management Agent (APM / Wily / Introscope)
• INTROSCOPE

Issue/Introduction

Core dumps generated by a php application when the APM php agent is enabled. If the agent is disabled the core dumps stop. The problem is intermittent i.e. not every application crashes.

Environment

APM 10.7 Agent
RHEL 6.4
php 5.3.3

Cause

The  php application suite was a mixture of Apache and client (batch) based applications. The APM php agent currently only supports mod-php (apache) based applications. Analysis showed that the cores were only being generated by the php-cli based applications.

Resolution

To prevent the agent being loaded for php-cli applications and generating cores and crashes, make the following configuration changes.

1. Locate the wily_php_agent.ini in the php environment and disable the caapm extension in that by commenting the entry, i.e. ;extension=wily_php_agent.so
2. Find the php.ini, genearally located in /etc/ folder
3. Make a copy of php.ini into php-cli.ini
4. Disable caapm extension in php-cli.ini if it is present in the file. i.e.
;extension=wily_php_agent.so
5. Enable the caapm extension in php.ini if not enabled already
i.e. extension=wily_php_agent.so