CGI Hung Process Help!

[Sivakatirswami]

I have some ancient CGI's that must be nearly 10 years old and
began when I was running metacard on the web server...

Some of these are hanging, not all the time, but just sometimes
  and appear as a "run away process" if you check "top" on the web server.
if I get 8 or ten of these, the server load approaches 10 and response times
for httpd start to slow down.

I'm having to manually go in and kill these every other day.

Recent CGI's which are we doing as stacks are not causing this problem.
On the other hand this particular one is a very high traffic form on our 
web site.

I don't think were are experiencing and DOS attacks as such, though form 
spam
bots used to fill this form out heavily until we put the "check for human"
visual clue (very simple version, not rotated and easily discernible
but it works) that must now be entered, which stopped the bots from
actually getting thru  (note the exit top to on the first data verify test)

Andre and I suspect possibly this email  segment

# now send invitation triggers to HPI  list server

   	put "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t" into mprocess
       open process mprocess for write
       write "From:" && tDataIn ["email"] & cr to process mprocess
       write "To:" && "hpi_list-on at hindu.org" & cr to process mprocess
       write "Subject:" && "Subscribe"  & cr & cr to process mprocess
      close process mprocess
    # wait until the openprocesses is empty

We commented the wait (something I got
from Scott Raney in days of yore... wish he were here~!)

but that did not help...

Any one have any clues on what could cause
this CGI to leave a hung running instance of Rev on the
web server?

what would happen if someone attempted to dump a super
long test chunk into the comments field?

Thanks
Sivakatirswami

PS.

We are using 2.6.1 for Linux and praying to the IT gods
of Edinburgh for a new web server ready linux engine
  that will run on our Fedora Core II web box.

#!/usr/local/bin/revolution

on startup

## read in data and split into array

if $REQUEST_METHOD is "POST" then
		
	put "" into PostIn

	repeat until length(PostIn) >= $CONTENT_LENGTH
		read from stdin until ""
     		put it after PostIn
   	end repeat
   	
	put  urlDecode (PostIn)  into tDataIn
	
	
   	
	split tDataIn by "&" and "="
	put keys(tDataIn) into tFields
	
	set the casesensitive to false
	
	## human check first:
	
	if tDataIn["14_CheckForHuman"] <> "Karma" then
	put failHumanCheck() into tResponse
	 put "Content-Type: text/html" & cr
  	 put "Content-Length:" && the length of tResponse & cr & cr
   	put tResponse
	
	exit to top
	end if

## Now check for missing fields


      	repeat for each line x in tFields
      	if (x is not among the items of 
"5_add2,9_foreign_state,10_Zip,12_Phone,13_Comments" ) then
            	if tDataIn[x] is empty then put x & "<br>" after missing_fields
       	end if
      	end repeat

      	if missing_fields is not empty then
          	sendUserFeedback (missing_fields)
      		exit startup
      	end if

# test email address is correct

	put isEmail(tDataIn ["email"] )  into emailCheck
	
	switch emailCheck
		 case "False"
			put badEmail() into tResponse
			break
		case "True"

# save data to file on server, pipe delimited, one record per line

	put "|" & the date &"|" into tSubmit

	sort lines of tFields numeric
	repeat for each line x in tFields
		put (tDataIn[x] & "|") after tSubmit
	end repeat
	put numToChar(166) after tSubmit

	put  tSubmit after url "file:../formdata/guestbook.dat"

# load response template and insert name
# and country specific response.

put tDataIn["2_First"] & " " & tDataIn["3_Last"] into vName
put  CountryResponseChunk(tDataIn["11_Country"]) into tCountryChunk

put url "file:../httpdocs/info/gstbk_responses/gstbk_thankyou.html" into 
tResponse

replace "###NAME###" with vName in tResponse
replace "###CountrySpecificResponse###" with tCountryChunk in tResponse
	
end switch

  	 put "Content-Type: text/html" & cr
  	 put "Content-Length:" && the length of tResponse & cr & cr
   	put tResponse
   	
   	# now send invitations triggers to HPI and Gurudeva list serve
   	put "/usr/sbin/sendmail -t" into mprocess
       open process mprocess for write
       write "From:" && tDataIn ["email"] & cr to process mprocess
       write "To:" && "hpi_list-on at hindu.org" & cr to process mprocess
       write "Subject:" && "Subscribe"  & cr & cr to process mprocess
      close process mprocess
    # wait until the openprocesses is empty
   end if
end startup


# end of cgi, subroutines and functions follow

on sendUserFeedback missing_fields
  put "Sorry, please go back and fill in the following required fields:" 
& "<p>" & missing_fields into tResponse
  put "Content-Type: text/html" & cr
   put "Content-Length:" && the length of tResponse & cr & cr
   put tResponse
end sendUserFeedback

function isEmail what
   return 
matchText(what,"^[A-z0-9_\-\.]+[@][A-z0-9_\-]+([.][A-z0-9_\-]+)+[A-z]$")
end isEmail

function badEmail
put "<html><head><Title>There is a problem with your email address!"\
& "</TITLE></HEAD><CENTER><BODY BGCOLOR=#ffffff> <FONT 
color=FF0000><h3>Sorry,"\
& "there was something wrong in the way you entered your email. <br>"\
& "Please go back and enter it again. Thank 
you.</H3></FONT></CENTER></BODY></HTML>" into fixYourEmail
return fixYourEmail
end badEmail

function failHumanCheck
put "<html><head><Title>Human Check Failed"\
& "</TITLE></HEAD><CENTER><BODY BGCOLOR=#ffffff> <FONT 
color=FF0000><h3>Sorry, "\
& "robots not allowed <br>"\
& "You must enter the word on the screen and then 
submit.</H3></FONT></CENTER></BODY></HTML>" into enterHumanCheck
return enterHumanCheck
end failHumanCheck


function CountryResponseChunk tCountry

replace " " with "_" in tCountry
put ("../httpdocs/info/gstbk_responses/" & tCountry & ".html") into 
tResponsePath
if (there is a file tResponsePath) then
  put url ("file:" & tResponsePath) into tCountryChunk
  return tCountryChunk
  else
put url 
("file:../httpdocs/info/gstbk_responses/all_other_countries.html") into 
tCountryChunk
  return tCountryChunk
end if

end CountryResponseChunk