letting modules specify startup code

[Brian Behlendorf <br...@organic.com>]

We're working on a custom module to do user authentication based on records
in an Oracle database.  Since the database is on a separate machine, the
model is "open connection, perform query, close connection"  - but obviously
that is a painful thing to do if you're trying to design a fast system with
low latency.  What I'd like to be able to do is have "open connection" 
happen at the beginning of a child's life, have the fd for the connection
always available, and then do the "close connection" at the end of the
child's life.  It doesn't *appear* that the Apache API allows for modules to
specify some chunk of code to be performed at startup, so before we go off
hacking this into http_main.c or wherever, does anyone have some good ideas
about generalizing this?  Is this a whack model?

	Brian

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