Things are looking glum.
First off I just discovered that I managed to run against the wrong stubs file for the one full history dump. OK it's fixable, I just need to move it to the right directory and update the status file etc. But more troubling is that even without spawning a separate job, we see memory increase when the python wrapper is used. All the python wrapper does is call the php script with a Popen. Simple stuff. And yet...
I'll start up the step by hand with the php command tomorrow as a temporary measure, and look for another workaround for the long term.
Ariel