Help! any apache gurus out there ?

[tbs-Gb/NUjX2UK8 at public.gmane.org (ref)]

Hi folks,

I have a problem with apache/PHP config, and for hte life of me cant
find a solution in google or on the apache website. Basically when
apache spawns a child process, and the process completes its work, it is
not dying. This means that in the timespan of maybe 20 minutes, my
apache server hits MaxChildren and grinds to a shuddering halt.
Restarting the server then resets it, and the cycle starts over. This is
driving me crazy.

For those who need full information, a more detailed description appears
below.

Servers :
Distro : Centos 5.2 
Kernel : 2.6.18-53.1.21.el5 #1 SMP Tue May 20 09:34:18 EDT 2008 i686
i686 i386 GNU/Linux
apache version : Apache/2.2.3 (CentOS)
php version : 5.2.6

while watching the server-status page from the server, it appears that
most of the processes are in state 'w' : "W" Sending Reply,

3.61 requests/sec - 12.2 kB/second - 3450 B/request
61 requests currently being processed, 5 idle workers
KWWW.WWWWWWW_WWWWW_WWW_WWWWWWWWWW.WWW.WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.WWWWW_WWK.
W..W.KKW_..W....................................................
................................................................
................................................................


then a short time later ....
3.54 requests/sec - 12.4 kB/second - 3581 B/request
99 requests currently being processed, 5 idle workers
KWKWWWWWWWKWWWWKWWWWKWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWKWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
KWWWWWKWWWKWWWWWWWWWW_KWWWWWKKWKWKWK____........................
................................................................
................................................................

as you can see, the requests per second went down, but the number of
processes in wait state went up. 
Obviously this is a bad thing
can anyone help me here, or even point me in the right direction ?

I am running apache-prefork with the following conf snips :
<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers       10
MinSpareServers    5
MaxSpareServers   10
ServerLimit      256
MaxClients       256
MaxRequestsPerChild  15
</IfModule>

I have also set the apache timeout to 20 seconds, and the keepalive
timeout to 2 seconds. However,I have a process that has been alive for
1759 seconds. Even the PHP timeout is set to 15 seconds. 
I have even gone as far as setting /proc/sys/net/ipv4/tcp_fin_timout to
5 seconds in an extreme attempt to get things to play nice ... nothing
seems to be working and I am getting short on heair to pull out ...


thanks for anything :)

Richard
-- 
ref <tbs-Gb/NUjX2UK8 at public.gmane.org>