PHP crashing Apache process on 10.6.x

Question

I have the stock Snow Leopard versions of Apache and PHP enabled on my iMac (a 2006 running the current 10.6.8).  It is set up for local development testing only (host entries like mysite.local 127.0.0.1 and Apache config entries), and things generally work fine.  However, occasionally I'll load a PHP file, edit the source code (using BBEdit), and quickly switch back to the browser and reload.  Every now and then the reload takes a few seconds longer than it should, and it turns out the httpd process handling it had crashed (and presumably was restarted).  The crash logs generally look like this:
Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: 0x000000000000000d, 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
Thread 0 Crashed:  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   libphp5.so                              0x0000000101341133 zend_hash_find + 400
1   libphp5.so                              0x000000010131ce0e zend_set_compiled_filename + 75
2   libphp5.so                              0x000000010131412e open_file_for_scanning + 448
3   libphp5.so                              0x0000000101314324 compile_file + 139
4   libphp5.so                              0x00000001011930e1 phar_compile_file + 848
5   libphp5.so                              0x000000010136336a ZEND_INCLUDE_OR_EVAL_SPEC_TMP_HANDLER + 515
6   libphp5.so                              0x000000010135988d execute + 585
7   libphp5.so                              0x00000001013350bc zend_execute_scripts + 376
8   libphp5.so                              0x00000001012e6cf9 php_execute_script + 732
9   libphp5.so                              0x00000001013b15fa php_handler + 1237
10  httpd                                   0x000000010000147f ap_run_handler + 90
There are some variations at the compile_file/open_file_for_scanning stage, the most common being something like:
Exception Type:  EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)
Exception Codes: KERN_INVALID_ADDRESS at 0x0000000000000000
Crashed Thread:  0  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
Thread 0 Crashed:  Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread
0   libphp5.so                              0x000000010131a6c0 _zend_mm_alloc_int + 924
1   libphp5.so                              0x0000000101313f3d zend_multibyte_read_script + 71
2   libphp5.so                              0x000000010131403d open_file_for_scanning + 207
3   libphp5.so                              0x0000000101314324 compile_file + 139
My guess is that apache or php has cached the script file or a file system reference to it, or something related to it, and editing change/save somehow invalidates this without its knowing, or the browser refresh comes so quickly after the save it hasn't received some notification from the file system.  This has happened over a year or two with whatever versions of apache/php were current with OSX 10.6.x at the time - it isn't new, and in my case it is more of a nuisance than a showstopper.
I was just wondering if anyone else has ever run into the same issue - I'd be interested to know if it goes away with Lion, for instance, or if anyone has seen something similar with custom builds of PHP. 

Answer 1

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