from this page:
I found this info:
The mod_fastcgi process manager isn't particularly patient though (there's room for improvement here) and since it has to shutdown too, sends a SIGTERM to all of the FastCGI applications it is responsible for. Apache will restart the process manager and it will restart its managed applications (as if the server was just started). SIGTERM is, well, SIGTERM - your application should exit quickly.
What this implies to me is that if Database I/O, or some other part of the CGI script, fails to respond in a timely fashion (ie getting slower with data-volume growth), that mod_fastcgi is killing the script......is that how other people interpret these docs or what am I missing..