aspell crashing my box.

**sneader** · 02-08-2005 02:15 PM

I'm having a problem with a process called "aspell" running by user "cpanel" and I'm not sure what it's used for, but it's killing my box.

The command (/usr/bin/aspell -a -d american -H) is running under the cpanel user and it gobbles up RAM until the box dies.

We can reproduce this behavior with this: echo "<html><body>blah lindner" | /usr/bin/aspell -a -d american -H

The exact command that was using over 1.2G of memory before we killed it last time was:

/usr/bin/aspell -a -d american -H

Any ideas or pointers would be appreciated.

- Scott

**abused1** · 02-11-2005 10:55 AM

We are running into this problem daily on multiple servers. Every time we come across it we disable aspell for that server.

To disable it you can do chmod 0 /usr/bin/aspell

Does anyone have a workaround that does not require it being disabled? And does anyone have an idea why this seems to be a recent problem?

**abused1** · 02-11-2005 11:02 AM

sneader what os is your server? we are all RH 9

**puzz1ed1** · 02-11-2005 11:38 AM

aspell is running out of control on our RH9 box also, but is being stopped by PRM when it gets out of hand. Stops the server crashing, but need to find a better solution

**andyf** · 02-11-2005 12:27 PM

Seeing the same issue - RH8

**sneader** · 02-12-2005 01:20 AM

Originally Posted by abused1

sneader what os is your server? we are all RH 9

Yep, same here... actually Fedora Legacy.

I opened a ticket with cPanel, after finding some stuff on the Internet.

In part of my ticket, I wrote:

> I found this one the web... Same problem: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/as.../msg00028.html
>
> Proposed solution: http://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/as.../msg00030.html

cPanel replied to this part with:

Since its a known bug with aspell go ahead and upgrade to aspell 0.50 like it recommends and then see if it resolves it.

Horde's spell check is what uses it, just FYI. So i the upgrade doesn;t work it may need rebuilt into PHP:

if /var/cpanel/usecpphp exists:
/scripts/makecpphp
if it does not then do:
/scripts/easyapache option 7

Let me know if that resolves it or not, thanks!
--
Daniel Muey
cPanel Support Level II

I have not had time to put any further time into it. We've disabled it on our box for now.

- Scott

**cretu** · 02-14-2005 11:54 AM

Hi there,

I have attempted to upgrade the ASpell by /scripts/perlinstaller aspell and recompiled PHP, however, this did not help and aspell process is contantly running at very high CPU usage.

Any alternatives, suggestions?

Cretu

**silversurfer** · 02-24-2005 09:58 AM

I had tested upgrading aspell. It works fine.

**sneader** · 02-26-2005 01:16 AM

silversurfer, can you detail what you did to upgrade/fix aspell?

- Scott

**silversurfer** · 02-26-2005 01:28 AM

Sure. I assumed you are logged in as root on shell.

1. In my server, I have the Redhat aspell RPMs. Therefore, I want to remove them. To remove them, I want to find out the packages names.

rpm -qa | grep aspell

2. In your box, this may defer. But on mine, I found this 3 packages.

rpm -e aspell-0.33.7.1-25.3 aspell-devel-0.33.7.1-25.3 aspell-config-0.33.7.1-25.3

3. Download the updated version and the dictionary files

cd /usr/local/src
wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/aspell-0.60.2.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/aspell/dict/en...-6.0-0.tar.bz2

4. Unzip the files

tar -zvxf aspell-0.60.2.tar.gz
tar -jxvf aspell6-en-6.0-0.tar.bz2

5. Configuring and compiling

cd aspell-0.60.2
./configure
make
make install

cd ../aspell6-en-6.0-0
./configure
make
make install

6. Add a sym link
ln -s /usr/local/bin/aspell /usr/bin/aspell

You can test it with:

echo "<html><body>blah lindner" | /usr/bin/aspell -a -d american -H

or

echo "<html><body>blah lindner" | /usr/local/bin/aspell -a -d american -H

You can also do the following to check version:

root@ [/usr/local/src/aspell6-en-6.0-0]# aspell -v
@(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell 0.60.2)

**sneader** · 02-26-2005 05:20 PM

silversurfer, that was WAY beyond the call of duty to spell it out (pun intended) for me like that. I was able to successfully get aspell upgraded!

My final problem (I hope) is being able to use aspell correctly. Maybe I'm just doing something stupid, but when I spell check an e-mail, it gives me suggestions, I choose one of the suggestions, click on the "change" radio button, then NEXT. And it thinks for a while, then comes back with the same errors... it doesn't change any of the words.

EDIT: PROBLEM SOLVED!! I was using the 3rd party "proxy" software, which allows users to get to webmail without using port 2095 (so, they can get webmail via http://webmail.myhost.com for example). When I get to webmail via http://www.custdomain.com/webmail which is the normal way for people to get to webmail, then it works just fine!!!

Thanks silversurfer -- I hope I can return some type of favor in the future!!

- Scott

**ttremain** · 03-16-2005 05:56 PM

Also, before creating the symlink ln -s /usr/local/bin/aspell /usr/bin/aspell

You should: rm -f /usr/bin/aspell

I also decided to add:
killall aspell

to get rid of all rogue prodcesses that might still be running.

**ahbao** · 04-02-2005 05:10 AM

same to my rhe3 box. it take up 1.2g of memory when I only have 2g

aspell version

root@server [~]# aspell -v
@(#) International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell .33.7.1 alpha)

I have disabled it

**scottabq** · 04-04-2005 06:51 PM

Same problem here - brand new rhe 3 cp box - International Ispell Version 3.1.20 (but really Aspell .33.7.1 alpha)

Just run a spell check in horde and be ready to kill aspell. Thanks for the posts.

**panayot** · 04-06-2005 07:11 AM

Thanks a lot silverserfer!

All worked great on RHE

The only change I had to make was to add --nodeps:

rpm -e --nodeps aspell-0.33.7.1-25.3 aspell-devel-0.33.7.1-25.3 aspell-config-0.33.7.1-25.3

because some squirrelmail rpms seemed to have dpendencies on the aspell rpms ( I do not see any spellchecking in squirrelmail, but anyway..)

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