Post commit hook script: strange behavior

Hi all,

I am wondering if there is anything special about the behavior of the
hook scripts. I once noticed that scripts invoked by "post-commit" run
about twice as long as if they are invoked by cron. And now I have
another, fatal problem:

The script invoked by the hook script hangs, and the commit does not
finish at remote side. The line the script stops at is:

cat keywords.txt | xargs -P 1 -n 2 --replace=KEY /usr/bin/bib2bib -c \
'keywords: "KEY"' ./r3-literature.bib -ob KEY.bib

and the process list shows: (sorry for the formatting)

www-data 23324 0.0 0.4 2472 1128 ? S 12:28 0:00 /bin/sh /srv/svn/r3/r3-literature/hooks/post-commit /srv/svn/r3/r3-literature 129
www-data 23325 0.0 0.4 2468 1148 ? S 12:28 0:00 /bin/sh /home/r3/bin/makebibpages
www-data 23332 0.0 0.1 1492 416 ? S 12:28 0:00 xargs -P 1 -n 2 --replace=KEY /usr/bin/bib2bib -c keywords: "KEY" ./r3-literature.bib -ob KEY.bib
www-data 23357 0.0 0.4 2680 1076 ? S 12:28 0:00 /usr/bin/ocamlrun /usr/bin/bib2bib -c keywords: "robotics" ./r3-literature.bib -ob robotics.bib

If calling post-commit from a shell (as user www-data), the script works
without a problem. Also the script runs without a problem when invoked
by cron (as the same user). Hardware problems are very unlikely, the
server moved to new hardware recently without changing this behavior.

So where is the speciality about the post commit thing? Do I understand
something wrong?

System specs:

Linux version 2.6.8-1-386 (joshk@trollwife) (gcc version 3.3.5 (Debian
1:3.3.5-2)) #1 Thu Nov 25 04:24:08 UTC 2004

svn, version 1.1.4 (r13838)
   compiled May 13 2005, 06:29:47

Apache 2

gruß,

-- 
Lutz Frommberger
SFB/TR 8 Spatial Cognition - Project R3-[Q-Shape]
Cognitive Systems Research Group, Universität Bremen
http://www.cosy.informatik.uni-bremen.de/staff/lutz/