My ISP's machine was overloaded this morning because a CGI script that uses a DBI connection was being invoked heavily (in response to a mass mailing of a newsletter). While the proper solution would have been to rewrite this to use
mod_perl, I merely coded up a "highlander" solution using a sentinel file that gets flocked.
"You only have one life! If you value it, go home!" -- Connor MacLeod in
Highlander
use CGI;
use Fcntl qw(LOCK_EX LOCK_NB);
open HIGHLANDER, ">>/tmp/renew.cgi.highlander" or die "Cannot open hig
+hlander: $!";
{
my $count = 0;
{
flock HIGHLANDER, LOCK_EX | LOCK_NB and last;
sleep 1;
redo if ++$count < 10;
## couldn't get it after 10 seconds...
my $host = $ENV{REMOTE_HOST};
$host = $ENV{REMOTE_ADDR} unless defined $host;
warn "$0 @ ".(localtime).": highlander abort for $host after 10 se
+conds\n";
print CGI::header(-status => 503,
-retry_after => 30,
-type => 'text/plain'),
"Our server is overloaded. Please try again i
+n a few minutes.\n";
exit 0;
}
}
## be sure to close HIGHLANDER at end of critical region if using mod_
+perl