Fixing cpu hog with all upstream servers marked "down". The following configuration causes nginx to hog cpu due to infinite loop in ngx_http_upstream_get_peer(): upstream backend { server 127.0.0.1:8080 down; server 127.0.0.1:8080 down; } server { ... location / { proxy_pass http://backend; } } Make sure we don't loop infinitely in ngx_http_upstream_get_peer() but stop after resetting peer weights once. Return 0 if we are stuck. This is guaranteed to work as peer 0 always exists, and eventually ngx_http_upstream_get_round_robin_peer() will do the right thing falling back to backup servers or returning NGX_BUSY.

--- a/src/http/ngx_http_upstream_round_robin.c
+++ b/src/http/ngx_http_upstream_round_robin.c
@@ -585,7 +585,7 @@ failed:
 static ngx_uint_t
 ngx_http_upstream_get_peer(ngx_http_upstream_rr_peers_t *peers)
 {
-    ngx_uint_t                    i, n;
+    ngx_uint_t                    i, n, reset = 0;
     ngx_http_upstream_rr_peer_t  *peer;
 
     peer = &peers->peer[0];
@@ -624,6 +624,10 @@ ngx_http_upstream_get_peer(ngx_http_upst
             return n;
         }
 
+        if (reset++) {
+            return 0;
+        }
+
         for (i = 0; i < peers->number; i++) {
             peer[i].current_weight = peer[i].weight;
         }