SPUG: Segmentation Fault in mod_perl

[Jonathan Gardner]

Okay, run while you still can! 

We're running mod_perl on Apache. I am working on a module to
allow people to search our pages.

I got ht://dig. This is a fine piece of software, and it works great. Ht://dig
has a program that works as a CGI script, and using the configuration files and
templates, you can configure almost anything you would like to.

We want to really customize stuff, really really customize it. So I figured
we'd trick htdig to output XML, and use XML parser to parse it out, and then
take that and convert it into hashes and arrays and scalars we can use to fully
customize everything in Perl.

Okay, so I wrote a module that takes the search parameters and returns a hash
with all the results stored inside. I wrote a test script that runs from the
command line and everything works beautifully. I am so happy I beam for joy!

I plug it into Apache mod_perl and I get the dreaded segmentation fault. Not
just once, over and over again, almost every time I try to run it.

The only hint I have is that perhaps it is an out-of-memory problem. This would
make sense. I have the program that consumes a lot of memory (the search), and
XML::Parser trying to pack everything into 'Tree' style. But it doesn't fail
during that - it fails when I start working on the tree with a couple of subs,
so if it WAS a memory problem shouldn't it fail during the XML parsing or
during the searching? How do I check to see how much memory the command-line
script uses?

What do I do to find out the problem, short of putting a "warn"
between every line of code? How do I use the core dump - if it is useful at
all? What rotting nuggets of useful knowledge are lodged in the wisdom
teeth of the gurus, and could they use the toothbrush of the transfer of
knowledge to reveal those morsels to me? :-)

-- 
Jonathan Gardner
gardner at sounddomain.com
(425)820-2244 x123


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