Since we upgraded to asl 3.0.21 on monday apache has been causing the server load to go up, up, up, until it is restarted.

[root@www ~]# w
14:38:41 up 8:00, 2 users, load average: 32.40, 23.85, 81.43
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
sebas pts/1 s01060023bee9140 06:39 0.00s 15.13s 0.06s sshd: sebas [priv]
sebas pts/0 s01060023bee9140 14:32 6:11 0.02s 0.01s sshd: sebas [priv]
[root@www ~]# w
14:41:46 up 8:03, 2 users, load average: 51.90, 34.56, 75.04
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
sebas pts/1 s01060023bee9140 06:39 10.00s 15.47s 0.07s sshd: sebas [priv]
sebas pts/0 s01060023bee9140 14:32 13.00s 0.03s 0.01s sshd: sebas [priv]

It is spawning a large number of instances which is abnormal.

26047 ? Ss 0:03 /usr/sbin/httpd
26058 ? S 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
26062 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
26065 ? Sl 0:01 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
26895 ? Sl 0:01 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
27231 ? Sl 0:03 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
27242 ? Sl 0:01 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
29507 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
29695 ? Sl 0:01 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
29719 ? Sl 0:01 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
29723 ? Sl 0:01 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
29737 ? Sl 0:06 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
32591 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
32679 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
32695 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
32697 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
486 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
677 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
1489 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
1552 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
1600 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
1612 ? Sl 0:01 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
1615 ? Sl 0:03 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
1634 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3597 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3598 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3624 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3635 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3659 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3689 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3705 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3730 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3732 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3740 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3742 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3749 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3818 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
3836 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
5682 ? S 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
5727 ? S 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
5743 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
5744 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
5805 ? S 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
5845 ? S 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd
5853 ? Sl 0:00 \_ /usr/sbin/httpd

Thanks for your help.

I've just upgraded to 3.0.22

[root@www repos]# asl -v
ASL Version 3.0.22: RHEL 6 (SUPPORTED)