Every web hosting user has a certain number of PHP processes available. When the maximum number of PHP processes for a user has been reached and all of them are occupied, there are no more free processes available. This can lead to longer load times because requests have to wait until a process becomes free. If many requests have to wait, the “Error 503 – Service Unavailable” error appears when calling the website.
In this case, the following error message is displayed in the error log:
[Mon Jul 22 09:22:58 2019] [error] [client 1.2.3.4] mod_hcgi: pm error: user limits reached!
The error log can be accessed via the Hostpoint Control Panel under the “Websites” item, if you click on “Logs” at the corresponding website and then switch to the “Errorlogs” tab. The logs show exactly what is being called. This can help you and your webmaster find the error in your application.
If you operate several websites on the same web hosting, the cause does not necessarily have to be at the website with the error messages. It is also possible that one of your other websites is claiming all the processes. If you have configured several websites with different PHP versions and encounter this error message, we recommend to switch all websites to a common PHP version.
You have the possibility to terminate all PHP processes via shell with the following command:
killall -9 php-cgiHow to connect to the server via SSH is explained in the article “How can I configure and use SSH?”.
Our support will be glad to help if you can not terminate the processes yourself and will help you analyze the problem.
For support requests please use this form instead.