[cobalt-users] Perl CGI programs hanging around

["Brian Baggett" <bbaggett@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I have a RAQ3 w/ 64MB of RAM.

Three Perl CGI programs that we run dozens of times each day are hanging
intermittently today.  I have made no code changes to these programs
recently.  The symptoms are that the browser spins and eventually times
out.  When I run 'top' from an ssh session, I see these same name.pl
programs hanging around.  They are consuming low CPU (0-5%), but they seem
to have way to much memory, grabbing more and more as time goes by.

These Perl CGI's are a few hundred lines.  They do some file I/O and they
usually finish running in a second or two.  Also, they do receive data via
HTTP POST method.

I can kill the programs, but once I enter this cycle, they seem to keep
acting up even after an HTTPD restart and a complete shutdown and restart
of the box.

I had the same exact problem two weeks ago to the day, and it didn't clear
up until my web host reset the box for the second time that day.  Before
that day and since that day until just now, the same programs have been
working perfectly.

My guess is that they are waiting for some resource, but I can't explain
why they run fine for two weeks and I also can't explain the apparent
memory leaks.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance,

Brian