Apache processes hanging on truncated upload w/ Cold Fusion

[Alan C]

Using Apache 1.3.2 on Solaris with ColdFusion 5.

We have a low load server with users uploading files taken from external
devices on diskette. The disks tend to go bad so we have a number of
users uploading diskettes that are corrupted and unreadable when
accessing the raw data files, but fine when reading the disk directory.

When the upload is performed with a bad diskette (any browser,
IE/Netscape) the uploaded file is shorter than the browser would expect.
The browser content length (~600 bytes) is shorter than the
Content-Length (~12,000) setting. Apache sends the request through to
Cold Fusion with the corrected Content Length (~600 bytes). The Cold
Fusion page checks the content length and sends a reply back to the user
that the file is too short. The client never sees this and eventually
the browser times out.

Apache does not close the connection and does not forward the Cold
Fusion response back to the client.
Eventually, all connections are used and the server will not respond.
Timeout directive has no effect.
We currently have to kill the processes to keep the server running.
Using CFABORT does not help.

This is somewhat difficult to test in that you have to have a diskette
with a valid TOC/directory but unreadable otherwise.
We cannot force the customer to upload from a hard drive.

Is there a fix or workaround to prevent the hanging processes?
It looks to be an Apache problem, not a CF problem.

Thanks
Al