sending large files via mason

In order to protect certain files that require a valid login cookie to get 
them, I have a Mason component that checks for the cookie and sends large files 
to the browser.

I use a basic read loop to send the file a bunch of chunks at a time:

        open (FILE, "/some/path");
        my $buf;
        while (read(FILE, $buf, 16384)) {
                $m->out($buf);
        }
        close(FILE);

I've got a front/back reverse proxy in place, but still the Apache/mod_perl 
child running the component is tied up for a bit while the file is read in and 
spit back out. Is there a better way to do this? I'm also running into "exit 
signal Alarm clock" messages in the errorlog and incomplete file transfers when 
several requests are being made; I wonder if what I'm doing is contributing to 
the problem.

If you have any suggestions for better ways to "cookie-protect" a file with 
Mason (or without Mason on the reverse-proxy front server), I'd love to hear 
about them.

--
Jase P Wells .:. jase@xxxxxxxxx


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