FastCGI - updating settings

DreamT has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

(I couldn't come up with a better thread title...)
Hi,
I run a script using Perl and FastCGI (main.fcgi) . This script includes another scipt that holds settings (variables)for the main script (settings.pl).

There also is a third script, an administration program that alters settings in settings.pl.

If main.fcgi hadn't been a fcgi-script, the altered settings in settings.pl had been used immediately. But, as it is now I have to restart Apache for the changes to take effect.

Is there a way to get around this? I.e. can i include settings.pl in main.fcgi in a way that makes the changes take effect immediately?

I know that I can inlude in the

while ($query = new CGI::Fast)
{
require("settings.pl");
}
[download]

, but it (also) has to be included before this, since it holds settings that is to be used before this code piece is executed.

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Re: FastCGI - updating settings by almut (Canon) on Mar 04, 2010 at 08:49 UTC
Maybe do is what you're looking for. In contrast to require, it does not keep track of what's already been loaded. In any case, as the process is running persistently, you'll have to have some mechanism that triggers the reloading of the settings. Several ways are conceivable: Check the modification date of `settings.pl` at every request that's being made, and reload it if its modification date has changed. Have a special URL that's associated with a routine that does the reloading (make sure the request is authenticated). Send the process (or process group) a signal (e.g. `USR1` via `kill`), and have the signal handler trigger the reloading. ... P.S. As you have things now, you may not actually have to restart Apache; killing the FGCI processes directly is usually sufficient, because `mod_fastcgi` (with a typical configuration) will simply respawn new processes if the old ones have vanished...	[reply] [d/l] [select]
Re: FastCGI - updating settings by goeb (Pilgrim) on Mar 04, 2010 at 08:54 UTC
The following should do the trick, it will `exit` if the mtime of `$file` (edit: relative to the script's start time, of course...) is less than zero, ie. `$file` has been modified after the script's start time: `while (my $cgi = new CGI::Fast ()) { # process the current request... exit if -M $file < 0; }` [download] Then let the webserver take care of restarting it. (Note that the `exit` call is placed after the processing of a request, since the `while` loop is only entered after a new request is made to the script, immediate exit could break the connection. This leaves one request being processed with the old settings.)	[reply] [d/l] [select]