This is one of those "in between" kind of things between the cracks between Perl, IIS, CGI, Windows NT and possibly Apache, and I'm having a little trouble getting a grip on it.

I'm running Windows NT, M$ I.I.S. server, plugged in ActiveState Perl to do some CGI scripting (ported from Unix, do NOT ask why), everything seemed to be working fine but after a few weeks, suddenly the performance of the server was dead-slow. After looking at several things (including some nice people abusing our ftp site with cracked PS-2 games to the tune of 1.4GB, thank you, get a life please), we looked at the task manager -- 100% CPU utilization. Why? Seventeen Perl.exe processes partying hard. Couldn't kill them, but we could debug them, and kill them from the debugger. As soon as all 17 Perl.exe's were safely at breakpoints, the CPU load dropped precipitously.

Now, this system seems to have Oracle installed, and Oracle apparently decided to bring along Apache and Perl for the ride, 'cause we've got, like 1-1/2 Perls installed. Maybe that's relevant, maybe it's not. It sure looks like Oracle's 'bastardized' their Perl, there doesn't seem to be a full complement of modules out there, for instance.

Anyhow, I'm trolling for ideas. If I were on Unix, I could just "truss -f -p" on one of the perl binaries, but AFAIK there ain't no truss on NT, so I'm kind of lost.

Short of reinstalling a bunch of software (up to and including the O.S.), does anyone have any ideas for me to try?

Thank You O Great Masters.
- alden.

In reply to 17 Perl.exe processes by awilner

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