[Catalyst] Database connections leaking

[knathan at linux54.com]

Just for background, I have inherited a  
Catalyst/TT/Postgresql/Apache2/mod_perl web application. The  
programmer that was responsible for the design and initial coding left  
our company and is unavailable for consults. I am very new to  
Catalyst, fair level of experience in TT, Perl and postgresql. Very  
little experience in Apache and none in mod_perl. I'm an old C and ASM  
programmer, stumbling my way through the web-centric world -- and  
actually liking it, until this problem! :-)

The program seems to be working fine while on the Catalyst test  
server, and when on an Apache/mod_perl server when the postgres  
database is on the same physical server. The database connections  
don't start leaking until we attempt to use a separate (physical)  
database server. We verified this using iptraf and seeing none of the  
connections being re-used *or* closed.

The following two modules are present in the system:

---------------------------
package MyApp::Model::DBI;

use warnings;
use strict;

use base 'Catalyst::Model::DBI';

__PACKAGE__->config(
     dsn      => 'dbi:Pg:dbname=xyz',
     user     => 'xyz',
     password => 'xyz',
     options  => {AutoCommit => 1, RaiseError=>1}
);
---------------------------

---------------------------
package MyApp::Model::Default;

use warnings;
use strict;

use base qw(
      Catalyst::Model::DBIC::Schema
);


__PACKAGE__->config(
     schema_class => 'MyApp::Schema',
     connect_info => [
         'dbi:Pg:dbname=xyz',
         'xyz',
         'xyz',
     ],
);
---------------------------

My gut feeling is this may be part of the problem, but the Model::DBI  
is needed for direct SQL queries (many weeks of work needed to convert  
them to the Catalyst method) and the current authentication system,  
while the Model::Default is needed for all the Model::* packages using  
the Catalyst system. (A script utilizing DBIx::Class::Schema::Loader  
keeps all of our Schema files matched to the database.)

The 'dsn' entry in the above files works fine for the web server and  
database server on one machine. When we change it to:

    'dbi:Pg:dbname=xyz;host=10.10.0.34'

to access a different server for the database, that's when the  
connection leaking goes nuts -- the program still works fine until it  
dies from lack of connections. I've been searching the web and not  
finding many answers.

I've gone through about a year's worth of msgs on this mailing list  
and didn't see anything that helped. If someone could point me to some  
documents or threads or other source of info (or maybe a more  
appropriate mailing list if I picked wrong!) that could shed light on  
this for me, I'd be grateful. And my one, remaining, brain cell would  
last me a while longer . . .

-- 
Kevin Nathan
knathan at linux54.com