Docker container unresponsive

Docker Engine General
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1

I have a wordpress site hosted in a docker container with webserver apache, my site go down and the last log of the container was
[Wed Mar 19 14:48:04.808863 2025] [mpm_prefork:error] [pid 1:tid 1] AH00161: server reached MaxRequestWorkers setting, consider raising the MaxRequestWorkers setting

The status of container is running but it is completely unresponsive, neither its getting restarted not stopping.

2

Have you tried forcefully removing it?
docker rm -f <containername>

3

It’s a production container and I don’t want to remove it.

4

If it ain’t responding, what good does it do to stay “up”?

5

I need a long-term solution for future provisioning since I have multiple websites running in separate containers. Even if I delete and recreate a new container, I want to prevent this issue from happening again.

6

Read about the AH00161 Wordpress error you’re getting then

As for the immediate problem - The container is unresponsive, I do to know if there is anything that can be done about it, so recreating it seems the logical choice

1 Like
7

@deanayalon is right. You have an issue with the settings of the Apache HTTPD process. It has limit of how many worker process can run. If you set it too low, you will run out. Everything depends on the traffic and number of visitors you have. I didn’t need to configure HTTPD for some times, there is a documentation about these parameters and how it should be set.

In the container world, the solution when a container fails is often recreating it. It can even happen automatically. So you it can be quickly fixed until you work on a permanent solution which is in this case setting Apache HTTPD to support the number of visitors and making sure all the related parameters are set correctly.

If you want to get more container-based advice, I can recommend replication. You can have multiple HTTPD containers and use a loadbalancer in front of it. This is how you can scale up your workloads even dynamically when needed without changing server configuration.

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