[BlueOnyx:06137] Problems with PHP.INI and memory_limit

[Darrell D. Mobley]

I am having a problem with exceeding memory limits on a Joomla site using
the K2 component to download attached PDF files.

Large PDF files linked under each product are throwing 500 server errors and
the error log is reporting exceeded memory limit:

[Thu Dec 16 13:14:49 2010] [error] [client 66.177.41.71] PHP Fatal error:
Allowed memory size of 16777216 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 10240
bytes) in
/home/.sites/132/site21/web/administrator/components/com_k2/models/item.php
on line 719, referer:
http://www.blackmagicmissileworks.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=7
8:open-system-developers-module&Itemid=190

Even when I upped the site's memory limit to 40MB, it still came back with
the 16MB limit.  I changed it in the main server settings in the GUI.  By
default, it was set to 10MB, and there isn't even a 10MB option in the GUI.
Every time I changed it in the GUI, the download links for the site worked.
But, httpd was stopped and never restarted.  I had to restart httpd each
time I changed the setting for the server in the GUI from the command line.

Then HTTPD wouldn't even restart.

(98)Address already in use: make_sock: could not bind to address 0.0.0.0:80
no listening sockets available, shutting down
Unable to open logs
[FAILED]

I had to reboot the server to get HTTPD running.  Why it wasn't restarting
HTTPD when I edited the main server's PHP memory limit is beyond me, but I
had to set it at 40MB to get a 2MB PDF to download from the client's site.