VERY Weird Apache Problem!

Just a hour ago apache started acting very weird on one of our servers. It crashed and when i checked why it crashed i noticed the processes went from 100 to 500 processes and 99% = httpd processes. 480 of these httpd processes were sleeping. So the first thing i tryed was killing all apache processes and restarting apache but ofcourse that didnt help. I also noticed the load was skyhigh (~100) from the "top" command so i checked the error_log and it said the MaxClients was reached - when i changed the maxclients value to 1000 the processes went up to 1000 processes. So it could be an attack but then when i checked the output of "netstat" i noticed this:

tcp 0 1 server1.myserver.com:34541 server1.myserver.com:http SYN_SENT
tcp 0 1 server1.myserver.com:34538 server1.myserver.com:http SYN_SENT
tcp 0 1 server1.myserver.com:34539 server1.myserver.com:http SYN_SENT
tcp 0 1 server1.myserver.com:34536 server1.myserver.com:http SYN_SENT
tcp 0 1 server1.myserver.com:34537 server1.myserver.com:http SYN_SENT
tcp 1 0 server1.myserver.com:http server1.myserver.com:57046 CLOSE_WAIT
tcp 1 0 server1.myserver.com:http server1.myserver.com:57302 CLOSE_WAIT
tcp 1 0 server1.myserver.com:http server1.myserver.com:56534 CLOSE_WAIT
tcp 1 0 server1.myserver.com:http server1.myserver.com:56790 CLOSE_WAIT
tcp 63 0 server1.myserver.com:http server1.myserver.com:58582 CLOSE_WAIT
tcp 1 0 server1.myserver.com:http server1.myserver.com:58326 CLOSE_WAIT
tcp 0 1 server1.myserver.com:34775 server1.myserver.com:http SYN_SENT
tcp 0 1 server1.myserver.com:34774 server1.myserver.com:http SYN_SENT

Please note that this is just a small part of the "netstat" output. There were 1000 of these - it seems the server is trying to connect to its own apache which is very strange. The good thing is that i know what is causing the processes now but the bad thing is i dont know why.. Does anyone know what could cause this strange behavior?

Any help is greatly appriciated. Thanks

 

 

 

 

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