local'ising $! seems to have sorted out that issue, revealing the real error that is happening on the remote process.

Re your other point, yes - deleting keys in the hash causes a panic, but I'll change the loop to only waitpid to those keys that have true values, which should help

thanks

In reply to Re^4: No child processes - system limit? by clinton
in thread No child processes - system limit? by clinton

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