[ic] spawn error in rpc mode -- 'products not a database'

[Jack Cushman]

Hi --

I'm seeing intermittent Internal Server Errors when running IC 5 in rpc 
mode. The error is

"Died in server spawn: products not a database, cannot use as products 
file"

(though I've also seen "Died in server spawn: Can't call method "new" 
on an undefined value at /usr/local/interchange/lib/Vend/Data.pm line 
751." -- that may be a separate issue)

Searching the archives, I see the first error coming up frequently upon 
startup for a misconfigured catalog. Since my catalog runs well upon 
startup, and then throws this error, I'm thinking it must be one of 
those problems with config variables not being passed to newly spawned 
threads in RPC mode. Can anyone shed more light?

I'm running Interchange version 5.0.0,  perl v5.8.3 built for 
i686-linux. Under -V perl says "usethreads=undef use5005threads=undef 
useithreads=undef usemultiplicity=undef", so I suspect perl threads are 
off. Let me know if there's any other config information that would be 
useful.

Thanks for your help,
Jack Cushman