Questions regarding limits of processes launched by system, exec, passthru ...

Hello all, Is there a way to limit the memory consumption and / or the CPU consumption of processes launched by the php functions system, exec, passthru, proc_open and shell_exec? We use mod_php with an apache (mpm-prefork) on Linux. The following settings don't have any effect at all: PHP: max_execution_time 30 memory_limit 8M Apache: RLimitCPU 30 30 RLimitMEM 8388608 8388608 The limits above do have effect on php-scripts (without system calls) and on CGIs (as well on processes launched by CGIs). Any Ideas? Kind Regards valli PS: I tested it with the following two scripts: system_memorytest.php ===================== <html> <head> <title>php-systemcall-memory test</title> </head> <body> php-systemcall-memory test<br> ... and here's the system call:<br> <pre> <?php $cmd = '/usr/bin/perl -e \'

      $| = 1;
      print "start of the systemcall<br>\n";
      $s = "teststr_";
      while (1) {
         print "len=".length($s)."<br>\n";
         sleep(1);
         $s .= $s;
      }

\''; print htmlspecialchars($cmd); ?> </pre> <?php ob_flush(); flush(); system($cmd); ?> </body> </html> system_timeouttest.php ====================== <html> <head> <title>php-systemcall-timeout test</title> </head> <body> php-systemcall-timeout test<br> ... and here's the system call:<br> <pre> <?php $cmd = '/usr/bin/perl -e \'

      $| = 1;
      print "start of the systemcall<br>\n";
      $i = 0;
      while (1) {
         if (($i % 10000000) == 0) {
            print "i=".$i."<br>\n";
         }
         $i += 1;
      }

\''; print htmlspecialchars($cmd); ?> </pre> <?php ob_flush(); flush(); system($cmd); ?> </body> </html>