In your httpd.conf
file, you'll likely have a section commented out that looks similar to:
<IfModule mod_status.c>
<Location "/server-status">
SetHandler server-status
Order deny,allow
Deny from all
Allow from 127.0.0.1
</Location>
ExtendedStatus On
</IfModule>
In looking at one of my servers that's had a problem w/ the load getting too high, I can see a similar problem ... the lines of 'SS' should never get that high:
Srv PID Acc M CPU SS ... Request
0-0 22830 1/9/3640 K 2.36 7 ... GET /[].css HTTP/1.1
1-0 79114 0/0/858 W 0.00 121462 ... POST /cgi/[] HTTP/1.1
2-0 22856 0/1/3211 W 0.00 20 ... POST /cgi/[] HTTP/1.1
3-0 22890 0/0/2697 W 0.00 0 ... GET /server-status HTTP/1.0
4-0 79105 0/5/525 W 0.34 121463 ... POST /cgi/[] HTTP/1.1
5-0 22892 1/1/764 K 0.00 6 ... GET /[].js HTTP/1.1
6-0 22893 1/1/449 K 0.00 5 ... GET /[].js HTTP/1.1
7-0 22894 1/1/57 K 0.00 5 ... GET /[].js HTTP/1.1
8-0 22895 1/1/426 K 0.00 4 ... GET /[].js HTTP/1.1
9-0 - 0/0/40 . 0.00 2 ... OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
10-0 22897 0/0/16 _ 0.00 4 ... OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
11-0 22898 0/0/8 _ 0.00 4 ... OPTIONS * HTTP/1.0
(you might need to scroll down to see that table -- the upper tables will be overall server statistics, and then a visualization of what each of the children is currently doing)
update : of course, this assumes something's going wrong. (based on your comment of only 10-15 requests per second). I have some other servers where people are mirroring files from us, and as the files are quite large, and there's a few folks who've been known to open 500 streams with not so great bandwidth, it'll eat up all 1024 connections, but it's perfectly normal and doesn't cause a crash.
If you're having problems with runaway CGIs, you might consider using suExec or CGIwrap to limit the execution time, although there will be overhead for using them.