The script starts the server fine (According to the output of apachectl anyway) but it appears that the server is immediately dispatched. I just get a defunct apachectl process.

I've not used expect before, but I do know that apachectl isn't supposed to hang around after starting apache; it should exit in good order. That would suggest to me an apache/ssl startup problem.

I just glanced at the expect FAQ, which has this:

Q: How come when I automate the passwd program to change passwords 
for me passwd dies before changing the password sometimes/every 
time?

A:    What's happening is you are closing the handle before 
passwd exits. When you close the handle to a process it is sent a 
signal (SIGPIPE?) telling it that STDOUT has gone away. The default 
behavior for processes is to die in this circumstance. Two ways 
you can make this not happen are:

    $process->soft_close();

    Which is new in 1.04.  This will wait 15 seconds for a 
process to finish up before killing it. 
    
    $process->expect(undef); 

    This will wait forever for the process to match an empty 
set of patterns. It will return when the process hits an EOF.
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Is it possible your sleep isn't long enough for apachectl to return? You might see what happens with
$process->expect(0)

___
-DA
> perl -MPOSIX -le '$ENV{TZ}="EST";print ctime(1000000000)'
Sat Sep  8 20:46:40 2001
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