how can I use clone() to resolve this problem.

Unfortunately, that means that the DBD driver would need, possibly extensive modifications. Which unless you are well versed in DBD internals, you should probably leave to the authors.

However, perhaps you can turn things around and put the long running part in a thread, and ping the DB from the main thread like so (also untested):

use threads;
use threads::shared;


$dbh = $conn->databaseHandle();# I am calling this from my connection 
+class

print "dbh: ". $dbh."\n";

my $done :shared = 0;
async {
    # system 'yourLongRunningCmd';
    &long_running_script;
    $done = 1; 
}->detach;

$dbh->ping while !$done and sleep 15; ## Adjust frequency to suit
    
    
print "Thread disappears..Done";
exit;

sub long_running_script {
    print "Testing... long_running test is beign called. will sleep fo
+r 30 sec\n";
    sleep(30);
}
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