I've Hit the Process Limit

[statmatics]

My first post. Thanks in advance.

My ISP shut me down temporarily and told me in an e-mail message:

==========
The problem was that you had hit your process limit with perl processes spawned from the following script:
~/www/cgi-bin/cq/coins
You should check this script to make sure that it doens't spawn enough processes to tank your account again.
==========

I've been developing Perl code on the web since 1998 and never had this happen. Don't processes on the server kill themselves when they end? Do I have to do something special at the end of each script?

First few lines:

#!/usr/local/bin/perl -T
use AnyDBM_File;
use CGI::Carp qw(fatalsToBrowser);
use CGI qw(:standard);
require './lb_db.pl';          # databases
require './lb_file.pl';        # file i/o
&initialize_db ();
&initialize_file ();
.
more stuff goes here
.
}
subroutines go here
 

[RonB]

Does the script make any calls using backticks, or the system function, or qx() operator, or open a pipe to another command?

[statmatics]

Hi RonB -- None of those things are done. The most exotic I get is DBM hashes, flat file operations, and a call to the time() function. I don't know what backticks are, so I may be doing those and not know it. -- Unlike most of my sites, this one is actually getting traffic, about 150 visits per day. Maybe it's just the traffic load? I use flat file locks to do sharing of the DBM hashes. Hmmm. -- Paul R.

[RonB]

150 hits per day is nothing.

The first place to start is to talk to you provider and find out the details of how many processes per day you're allowed and how may they counted the day that triggered the shutdown. You also want to clarify if the process count that they are referring to is the count of executions of the script (your 150 hit count) or of sub process that the script created.

I'd need to see your entire script to say if it's creating sub processes.

[numberwhun]

I have to agree with Ron, we definitely need more information.

If I were you, I would contact the ISP and find out what limit exactly was hit and what the numbers were. That will at least give you an idea where they set their limits on things.

Regards,

Jeff

[statmatics]

Thanks, guys. I have asked the ISP for more info, but got nothing of substance. It might be a fluke that will not happen again. It has never happened over the past 13 years.

The site is getting 150 visits per day, about 900 page views per day. But that's not even one script execution a minute. So I don't get it.

This is a great forum. Thanks!

[numberwhun]

@statmatics
Yeah, that just seems weird to me. If they had such an incredibly low limit, how would they be able to host any major sites? Sounds like it might have just been a fluke. If it happens again, open a ticket with them to force them to look into why its happening.

Regards,

Jeff