Most likely, the xx.pl script is getting killed off when the cgi exits. Do this:

system "/the/full/path/to/xx.pl @arguments $another_argument  </dev/nu
+ll >/full/path/to/output.log 2>&1 &";
[download]

(that log at the end can be switched to /dev/null, too, if you don't want to look at the output anymore. but i find it really useful for debugging.)

I'd guess that the reason that ls works but your xx.pl doesn't is that ls can complete quickly enough, but xx.pl takes longer & isn't done running when the cgi exits & its child processes are killed off. i got bitten by this on one of the first CGIs i wrote, and it took a friend & i a while of digging through FAQs to uncover the trick to keeping the child process running. -- cat