So I've ran into this problem and followed some other threads in trying to diagnose it and hitting a dead end. I have the issue where there are dozens of

Main goal is just to find out WHY it is happening, I'm a bit less interested in using scripts to up the setting as a bandaid and more focused on figuring out why it is happening.

As soon as I go clicking around the menus, it starts spanning a ton of

I have two systems my old 7.2.3 (hardware wise) and my new 7.2.3 fresh install that I am migrating to. My old server does not have this issue, so I'm completely puzzled (checked and yes my old server has this as well periodically)

New server consists of

• ASUS W880 - has IPMI on it

• 192GB DDR5 ECC

• 2x WD SNX850 4TB ZFS Mirror (cache)

• 2x WD 5400 MAX 3.84 ZFS Mirror (cache-downloads)

• Array XFS - 2x Parity Ironwolf PRO 28TB, slew of 28 and 26TB drives

• LSI 9400 16i to Supermicro SAS3 backplane, Supermicro 4u case

• Mellanox ConnectX-3

Minimal plugins installed

• Appdata Backup

• CA Cleanup Appdata (haven't used)

• Community Applications

• Dynamix System Buttons

• Fix Common Problems (doesn't show up anything)

• Intel GPU TOP

• Unassigned Devices (I uninstalled this but was still having the max_children setting issue and after reinstall is now posting an error (see below) to /var/log/php-fpm.slow.log and /var/log/nginx/error.log - I'm unsure if this is related to max_children as that error still happened when I uninstalled it)

• Unassigned Devices Plus (I uninstalled this but was still having the max_children setting issue and reinstalled it)

• Unassigned Devices Preclear (I uninstalled this but was still having the max_children setting issue and reinstalled it)

Only other kinda custom things I have done (and does not seem to affect the max_children issue)

• System drivers

  • i915 - options i915 force_probe=!7d67

  • xe - options xe force_probe=7d67

I've gone ahead and made the php tweaks to /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf and restarted the service a couple times

• slowlog = /var/log/php-fpm.slow.log

• request_slowlog_timeout = 5s

• request_terminate_timeout = 60s

cat /etc/php-fpm.d/www.conf | grep slowlog
; - 'slowlog'
; Note: slowlog is mandatory if request_slowlog_timeout is set
;slowlog = log/$pool.log.slow
slowlog = /var/log/php-fpm.slow.log
; dumped to the 'slowlog' file. A value of '0s' means 'off'.
request_slowlog_timeout = 5s
;request_slowlog_trace_depth = 20

root@Nexus:~# cat /var/log/php-fpm.slow.log 
[17-Feb-2026 02:49:49]  [pool www] pid 1168708
script_filename = /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php
[0x0000146a1721c8d0] exec() /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php:561

Note: the unassigned devices thing in the log only showed up after re-installing it, and the max_children still was happening without the plugin

root@Nexus:~# cat /var/log/nginx/error.log 
2026/02/16 21:38:01 [info] 6761#6761: Using 116KiB of shared memory for nchan in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:162
2026/02/16 21:38:01 [info] 6761#6761: Using 262144KiB of shared memory for nchan in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:162

2026/02/17 03:03:59 [crit] 6771#6771: *10894 connect() to unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock failed (2: No such file or directory) while connecting to upstream, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", subrequest: "/auth-request.php", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock:", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:03:59 [error] 6771#6771: *10894 auth request unexpected status: 502 while sending to client, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:04:00 [crit] 6771#6771: *10894 connect() to unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock failed (2: No such file or directory) while connecting to upstream, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", subrequest: "/auth-request.php", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock:", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:04:00 [error] 6771#6771: *10894 auth request unexpected status: 502 while sending to client, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:04:00 [crit] 6771#6771: *10894 connect() to unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock failed (2: No such file or directory) while connecting to upstream, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", subrequest: "/auth-request.php", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock:", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:04:00 [error] 6771#6771: *10894 auth request unexpected status: 502 while sending to client, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"

Note, that the nginx error log only had the two entries on 2/16 prior to me re-installing unsassigned devices and after I had mapped a SMB drive the errors on 2/17 showed up. 10.0.2.2 is my system I'm using the webbrowser from, 10.0.2.75 is the server

Other notes

• Docker is disabled

• VMs are disabled

• Still showing max_children errors

When I uninstalled all the Unassigned Devices the max_children was still showing errors but was not as bad, and nothing was showing up in /var/log/php-fpm.slow.log - now that I've reenabled them errors show up in both it and nginx error log, but I'm not sure it has anything to do with the max_children issue

nexus-diagnostics-20260217-0345.zip

Edited February 17Feb 17 by Zervun

I tried removing the unassigned devices various plugins again, and it's still happening.

Not much has changed log wise other than an error when I did on nginx - but that was probably due to the removal of preclear

root@Nexus:~# cat /var/log/nginx/error.log
2026/02/16 21:38:01 [info] 6761#6761: Using 116KiB of shared memory for nchan in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:162
2026/02/16 21:38:01 [info] 6761#6761: Using 262144KiB of shared memory for nchan in /etc/nginx/nginx.conf:162
2026/02/17 03:03:59 [crit] 6771#6771: *10894 connect() to unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock failed (2: No such file or directory) while connecting to upstream, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", subrequest: "/auth-request.php", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock:", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:03:59 [error] 6771#6771: *10894 auth request unexpected status: 502 while sending to client, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:04:00 [crit] 6771#6771: *10894 connect() to unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock failed (2: No such file or directory) while connecting to upstream, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", subrequest: "/auth-request.php", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock:", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:04:00 [error] 6771#6771: *10894 auth request unexpected status: 502 while sending to client, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:04:00 [crit] 6771#6771: *10894 connect() to unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock failed (2: No such file or directory) while connecting to upstream, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", subrequest: "/auth-request.php", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock:", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"
2026/02/17 03:04:00 [error] 6771#6771: *10894 auth request unexpected status: 502 while sending to client, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php HTTP/2.0", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Main"

2026/02/17 04:09:21 [error] 6771#6771: *16574 FastCGI sent in stderr: "Unable to open primary script: /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices.preclear/include/Preclear.php (No such file or directory)" while reading response header from upstream, client: 10.0.2.2, server: , request: "POST /plugins/unassigned.devices.preclear/include/Preclear.php HTTP/2.0", upstream: "fastcgi://unix:/var/run/php-fpm.sock:", host: "10.0.2.75", referrer: "https://10.0.2.75/Plugins"

root@Nexus:~# cat /var/log/php-fpm.slow.log
[17-Feb-2026 02:49:49] [pool www] pid 1168708
script_filename = /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php
[0x0000146a1721c8d0] exec() /usr/local/emhttp/plugins/unassigned.devices/include/UnassignedDevices.php:561

nexus-diagnostics-20260217-0458.zip

Edited February 17Feb 17 by Zervun