shell_exec slow with php

Question

Hi all

I have a curl script multi that helps index my site every 10 minutes

it pushes to a mysql db so I can search my site for users

The script uses 2 MB per instance (which isn't bad)

however every time I run the script it slows apache down ( i have a UNIX server) so badly it takes 30 seconds to search...

I keep the mysql db connection alive throughout and close at end - could that be the issue?

thanks all for your experience