There is a number of ways one could encounter this error. But in my case it was a result of using Drupal 7, Amazon s3 integration with the AWS SDK. This is a fairly popular setup for sites these days which have a large number of assets to store. And the "Perfect Storm" when using this causes a major issue on the site causing a segfault.
In the Apache error log you find something like:
AH00052: child pid 3211 exit signal Segmentation fault (11)
- or -
sh: 1: cd: can't cd to ~
The result in the browser is either a "white screen of death" or a "No Data Received" message, depending on the browser.
The Cause
There is a php bug in many releases of version 5.4, which on many Linux distributions is the default. https://bugs.php.net/bug.php?id=66076
This bug is encountered when using the AWS SDK version 1.5.10 is used (other versions may also be an issue). This is a pretty old version BUT this is the version that the Drupal awssdk module installs/recommends. So if you install this module using drush,`drush make`, etc, this is the version you will end up with.
The Fix
Download the latest AWS SDK release of version 1.x. https://github.com/amazonwebservices/aws-sdk-for-php/releases
At the time of this writing is 1.6.2
Replacing the contents of the /sites/all/libraries/awssdk with this latest release works around the php issue and should take care of the segfault site error.
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About the Author
Mike Bopp
Mike is the Managing Director of Rapid Development Group, where he drives strategy and operations while also leading multiple software development projects.