Hi everyone,

I've got this project running under mod_perl shows some information on a host. On this page is a text box with a dropdown that allows users to ping/nslookup/traceroute the host. The output is shown in the text box like a tail -f.

It works great under CGI. When the user requests a ping it would make an AJAX call to the server, where it essentially starts the ping with the output going to a temp file. Then subsequent ajax calls would 'tail' the file so that the output was updated until the ping finished. Once the job finished, the temp file would be removed.

However, under mod_perl no matter what I do I can's stop it from creating zombie processes. I've tried everything, double forking, using IPC::Run etc. In the end, system calls are not encouraged under mod_perl.

So my question is, maybe there's a better way to do this? Is there a CPAN module available for creating command line jobs and tailing output that will work under mod_perl? I'm just looking for some suggestions.

I know I could probably create some sort of 'job' daemon that I signal with details and get updates from. It would run the commands and keep track of their status etc. But is there a simpler way?

Thanks in advance.