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WebTop: raise PHP-FPM workers for the WebDAV service #8212
Description
The WebDAV service of WebTop (used by CalDAV/CardDAV clients to sync calendars and contacts) runs with the default PHP-FPM worker settings: at most 5 PHP processes can serve requests at the same time. On busy installations this limit is reached several times every hour, and the system log shows this warning:
webdav[1466256]: [25-Sep-2026 11:49:46] WARNING: [pool www] server reached pm.max_children setting (5), consider raising it
When all 5 workers are busy, new sync requests from phones and desktop clients have to wait, so synchronization becomes slow or times out.
The Z-Push service (ActiveSync) had the same problem in the past and its limit was already raised to 50 workers in build-images.sh. The WebDAV container was never changed.
Proposed solution
Raise the PHP-FPM worker settings of the webtop-webdav container image, in the same way it is done for webtop-z-push in build-images.sh.
These values were tuned on a production installation and no warnings were logged anymore:
pm = dynamic
pm.max_children = 40
pm.start_servers = 20
pm.min_spare_servers = 20
pm.max_spare_servers = 30
pm.max_requests = 500
pm.max_requests = 500 restarts each worker after 500 requests, which limits memory growth of long-running workers.
Alternative solutions
- Raise the values by hand inside the running container: the change is lost at every module update.
- Make the values configurable per instance: more flexible, but not needed for now, since the proposed values work well for large and small installations.
Additional context
The proposed WebDAV values are a little different from the current Z-Push ones:
| Setting | WebDAV (default) | WebDAV (proposed) | Z-Push (current) |
|---|---|---|---|
pm.max_children |
5 | 40 | 50 |
pm.start_servers |
2 | 20 | 5 |
pm.min_spare_servers |
1 | 20 | 5 |
pm.max_spare_servers |
3 | 30 | 35 |
pm.max_requests |
0 (never restart) | 500 | 0 (never restart) |
More idle workers (20 at start) use more memory, even on small installations with few users.
See also
Activity
gsanchietti commentedon Oct 8, 2026
Testing versions:
ns8-webtop:1.5.12-testing.1Fresh install:
Update an existing instance:
(docs)
Test case 1: clean install
Test case 2: update from 1.5.11
1.5.11, then create an event and a contact.1.5.12-testing.1with the update command above.Test case 4: new worker settings are applied
/usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf.runagent -m webtop1 podman exec webdav grep -E "^pm" /usr/local/etc/php-fpm.d/www.conflucagasparini commentedon Oct 9, 2026
Test cases 1-4: VERIFIED
DavidePrincipi commentedon Oct 9, 2026
Released https://github.com/NethServer/ns8-webtop/releases/tag/1.5.12