Speaking of problems ...

[Matthew R. Heusser]

  My web-site search problem is bothering me.
  
  Long problem statement is below my signature.  If you just want something to bang away at, you could try a search on:
  
  http://www.csis.gvsu.edu/~heusserm/cgi-bin/search.pl
  
  Two or three times a day on a couple of different days in the following week.  The search timed out for me yesterday @GR.pm, didn't work last night @8PM, did work @9PM, timed out again @9:15PM, and is now working @10:10AM.  I know the server is rebooted periodically, but otherwise, it makes no sense to me.  (Given Identical input and getting different results, I'm beginning to think it's a GVSU problem)
  
  If you could reply privately with a yes/no date/time count, that would be immensely helpful.
  
  Thanks,
 
  
  Matt H.
  
  
  I'm using a Perl script and CGI.
  
  In a nutshell:
  
  #--------------
  #Begin Code
  #--------------
  my $command = "$swish_program -w '$search_words' -f $index_file";  
  my @results = `$command`;    
   
  foreach (@results)
  {        
      #Handle Results
  }
  #--------------
  #End Code
  #--------------
  
  ($swish_program is something like "./swish", a test-searhing open source project I built from C code.  $search_words is something like "test", and $index_file is something like "mywebsite.index")
  
  It works just fine when I run it as my user. When I run over CGI, however, is sometimes hanging when I back-tick $command.  I'm guessing that it's not hanging but actually die-ing, and the browser is sitting around, waiting for output until it hits a time-out.
  
  A few things:
  
  (1) Yes, I regexp the heck out of everything before I create $command
  (2) Yes, I set $ENV{PATH} = ''; 
  (3) Yes, I've chmodded all executables so they are are world read-executable
  (4) I'm running on a 24-node beowulf cluster
  (5) The cluster is re-booted, machine by machine, periodically (not-quite-daily)