Improving apache start up times on Gentoo Linux

On my Gentoo virtual server, apache was taking up to 3 minutes to startup. The problem is caused by the system having too little entropy to generate random numbers needed for the PID. You can check the value on your machine using

cat /proc/sys/kernel/random/entropy_avail

A value below 20 is quite low. Emerging rng-tools can increase entropy and allow apache to start up more quickly.

emerge rng-tools
/etc/init.d/rngd start
/etc/init.d/apache2 start

Apache should now start in seconds.

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One Response to “Improving apache start up times on Gentoo Linux”

  1. Nikolas Coukouma Says:

    The better solution is to enable the (recently added) urandom USE flag and re-remerge apr

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