http://www.stonehenge.com/merlyn/LinuxMag/col39.html

I've written a perl script to tabulate the results of very large research surveys. Sometimes the requested calculation takes a few minutes, so I use a neat trick I picked up from one of Merlyn's columns where I fork the process to perform the calculations, while redirecting the browser to a URL that meta-refreshes on an update page (e.g. "Calculating respondent 29,400 (24%) Estimated time left 4 Minutes 26 seconds".) It works fantastically.

In Apache 1.3.

In Apache 2.0 however the fork/redirect voodoo doesn't work.

At least, I've tried my script on three systems and that seems to be the common thread:

Redhat Linux 7.3 -- Apache 1.3 -- Redirect ok!
Redhat Linux 9.0 -- Apache 2.0 -- Redirect fails in IE, ok in Mozilla Firefox
Redhat Linux Enterprise 3 -- Apache 2.0 -- Redirect fails in IE, ok in Mozilla Firefox

Boo! Evil bastard.

Here's the code in question because everybody likes code: 

    my $pid;

    if (! defined ( $pid = fork ) ) { 
        DieNice("Unable to fork: $!\n"); 
    }

    if ( !$pid ) {
        close(STDIN);
        close(STDOUT);
    }
    else {
        print $query->redirect(
            "$Config::Setting{ScriptsDirectoryURL}/$Config::Setting{Sc
+riptFilename}?Command=Update&Update=$Instance{ReportNumber}&Bottom");
        exit;
    }

[download]

Merlyn's example of this CGI trick in the article I linked to above also fails to work. It stalls until the script finishes too.

How can I possibly make this work?

In reply to CGI, fork, long processes on Apache 2 by Anonymous Monk

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