Re: [MacPerl-WebCGI] A macperl CGI problem

[David Steffen <steffen@biomedcomp.com>]

Tim Connolly wrote:

>For a few weeks now, I have been using MACPerl 5.004 rather heavily as a
>room scheduler.  As you can imagine the cgi program is rather large.  The
>CGI is running under Netpresenz web server (basically an offshoot of
>MacHttp) on a G4 with OS 9.  Every week or so, I find myself rebooting the
>server because weird errors begin popping up from MacPerl.  For instance,
>last week a few people were getting "404 CGI Failed" messages while others
>were getting in fine and just today I began getting a "Cannot find object or
>procedure 'mail' " from the intrepreter --- it was working on Friday and I
>haven't changed the email code in weeks ('mail' being of course the
>"Net::SMTP" package).  Upon rebooting the server all of these errors
>disappeared.  Is there any way I can prevent these errors or at least
>recover from them without going through a reboot?

1) Having worked with Mac-based webservers, I don't consider an 
uptime of a week unusually short.  I've done better on occasion, and 
I suspect you can find people who have carefully configured and used 
their Mac web server who have done much better, but nonetheless 
having to reboot once a week wouldn't surprise me.

2) I seem to recall reading on these lists that MacPerl itself can 
accumulate "history" if asked to run a series of programs without 
quitting in between.  That is the default behavior for MacPerl CGIs; 
the first CGI you run launches MacPerl, but it then remains open, 
running each CGI invocation, until you actively quit.  If that is 
what is happening to you, your best bet may be to configure MacPerl 
to quit at the end of each running of the CGI and restart it for the 
next one.  To accomplish that, insert the following line someplace in 
your Perl where it is sure to be executed (e.g. at the beginning):

MacPerl::Quit(2);

The MacPerl::Quit() command is described in the MacPerl documentation 
and In "MacPerl: Power and Ease".

3) I discuss some of the issues with using MacPerl as a CGI language 
in my recent column in PerlMonth:

http://www.perlmonth.com/columns/mac_perl/mac_perl.html?issue=11

You might find some suggestions points there.

-David Steffen-
David Steffen, Ph.D.
President, Biomedical Computing, Inc. <http://www.biomedcomp.com/>
Phone: (713) 610-9770 FAX: (713) 610-9769 E-mail: steffen@biomedcomp.com

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