scripts not completing...

[chibaA at TinterlogD.Tcom]

Other than having a runaway script... is there any other routine
reason why a script would not terminate properly?  (I'm running python
scripts as CGI through apache).  I noticed that script processing gets
really slow after a while, and noticed that there were still processes
still running with that script.  

Is there anyway to make the system automatically kill those processes
(apache, python scripts) which have been idle for a long time (and
probably hanging, or running away)?

TIA

kc