Why php fails to report syntax error and Apache crashes with segmentation fault?

Question

I have a class file which has some buggy code eg

  else{
            $stp->Object($a);               
            $abbr = $a->abbr;
        }
        asdf
    } 

My understanding is that php should properly display an error message eg saying sth that "asdf" is not a class or constant etc . But as I see this peice of code crashes the server with segmentation fault , as my error log file says:

[Fri Mar 08 17:21:37 2013] [notice] child pid 8615 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)

Is it possible to configure php/apache to properly handle these errors ? Why php is failing to report the error some understandable way . I only see "The connection was reset" message in browser.

Specification: XAMPP (php 5.3.1) MAC OS 10.6 Xdebuger installed

Answer 1

Apparently something is going wrong into Apache, so it can't be properly displayed because the Apache child exit.

I had some similar error once because the PHP error made a redirection to a PHP error file (ex: ErrorDocument 500), which contained the same error, so it redirect to the PHP error page and so on... making a redirection loop.

Apache kill itself to avoid the machine to go down.

---

You have to diagnose what is making Apache die.

To do this, install "strace", eg. on debian :

apt-get install strace

Then stop your Apache, and start it through strace :

strace -f /usr/sbin/apache2ctl

Reproduce your problem until your Apache child crash, and try to look into the strace log to find out what happened.

Hope this helped.