I'd have to agree with the "why CGI" question, but that aside, I've done this with PID files. The file serves as a lock; if another instance tries to run the contents are looked at to see if the PID is actually running.

The caveat here is that I did not use Proc::PID::File as most people do. I wrote mine years ago before that existed or before I knew it existed so I don't know if it handles that as mine does. I open the file like this to (I think) allow only one process at a time to get at it. I should review this now that I know more. 8-) 

  
local *PID_FH;
sysopen(PID_FH, $file, O_RDWR | O_CREAT) or die
  "Can't open PID file $file: $!\n";

flock(PID_FH, LOCK_EX) or die
  "Can't get write lock on PID file $file: $!\n";

[download]

In reply to Re: Locking out a CGI script whilst it runs by steves
in thread Locking out a CGI script whilst it runs by heezy

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.