[users@httpd] ExtFilter issues

[Andrew Koebrick <an...@mnplan.state.mn.us>]

Howdy,

I am getting some odd behaviour from the external filter modulte in
Apache 2.0 and would appreciate any input.  I have sed filters which
insert a virtual directive at the opening and close of the body:

ExtFilterDefine header mode=output intype=text/html cmd="/bin/sed
s/<\/head>/<\/head><!--#include\ virtual=\"\/inc\/headerder\"-->/gi"
ExtFilterDefine footer mode=output intype=text/html cmd="/bin/sed
s/<\/head>/<\/head><!--#include\ virtual=\"\/inc\/headerder\"-->/gi"

I then enable the filters thusly:

<Directory /home/httpd/html>
ExtFilterOptions LogStderr DebugLevel=0
SetOutputFilter header;footer;INCLUDES
</Directory>


This causes the pages to load _very_ slowly.  When I check the running
proccesses, as the page loads, I get three instances of:

[sed <defunct>]

A few questions: 
1) Why is sed hanging like this?  Should it not just shut down once
run?  Is it tie somehow to the httpd deamon?
2) It appears that sed is acting not only on the page being loaded, but
a daemon is being launced for each included page as well.  I tested this
by putting an extra "</head> in the include file and sure enough sed
acted on it- inserting a virtual include- but the text insertion
requested by the virtual include failed.  

This is counter to what I am expecting with the ordering defined by the
SetOutputFilter.   Is there any way to ensure that the filters run only
on the actual page and not the includes?  I have tried upping and
downing the ftype value for the ExtFilterDefines to no avail.

Can anyone please give me insight on better to control the filters and
speed up the pages?

Cheers,

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