I've been unable to find anything which really answers the question that I have, so if anyone can shed some light on the matter, I'd be grateful.
I'm not a Unix/Linux guy, so I'm running ActivePerl on Windows NT.
The scenario is this:
webscript.cgi calls background.pl to do some dirty work while the user continues browsing the site, using system($cmd). This works fine and all, but what I am wondering is THIS:
What happens if MULTIPLE calls are made within seconds of each other as a result of users actions to run background.pl? Will multiple instances of background.pl run simultaneously? Will one instance have to complete before the next can begin? Will any subsequent instances called simply fail? Or, will my machine begin to smoke and then perhaps explode? (chuckle)
Again, this is running in a Windows environment so I'm not sure if the rules with ActivePerl are a bit different than running in a Unix environment. Thanks to anyone who might have some information about this!
The web server doesn't know anything about the process running background.pl, so it does what it always does. It runs webscript.cgi which launches background.pl.
Now, if webscript.cgi waits for background.pl to complete, you could run into a situation where the web server stops accepting requests because all of its workers are running webscript.cgi. It will resume once a script ends.
All of this is very easy to test.
Will one instance have to complete before the next can begin?
No.
Will any subsequent instances called simply fail?
No.
Or, will my machine begin to smoke and then perhaps explode? (chuckle)
A poorly configured server could indeed be brought down by trying to run too many programs at once.