the active connection in nginx status is always increased, i am use rhel and nginx 0.8.54, the gcc and configure line:
built by gcc 3.4.6 20060404 (Red Hat 3.4.6-10)
configure arguments: --with-http_gzip_static_module --with-http_stub_status_module --with-http_geoip_module --add-module=/root/ngx_cache_purge-1.2 --add-module=/root/nginx_upstream_hash-0.3.1

before 0.8.53 not occurs.