when call pfsockopen there is a problem.  The first time you call it, it returns a resource id that is valid.  You trans/recv over the socket fine.  You call the script the second time.  It returns the same resource id except there is nothing on the end of it.  Logs on the program that is being tested against show there was one connection made, and one transaction completed.  The one of the first attempt, but that there were no subsequence connections (as you might expect as there would be one per apache thread, and as there are definately more than one apache thread...)  Changing the code to just plain fsockopen fixes the problem, all the transactions go fine, so It's definately not the end point that is failing.  I don't know if the apache thread that serviced both requests was the same, but the resource_id # was the same.  When trying this using a scale test package which should use all the apache threads the same result was observed.

PHP was compiled against apache_1.3.12 with --enable-track-vars --with-oci8 --with-oracle --with-apache=../apache_1.3.12