Question

I do have my own Controller in Magento, that has been done by following the guidelines here:
http://alanstorm.com/magento_admin_controllers

My controller extends Mage_Adminhtml_Controller_Action and inside there is a method:

public function myAction() {
    sleep(1000);
    die('I am done');
}

When this method is running I cannot load any other Magento Admin pages. They will load eventually right after the method above is complete.
Also Frontend works fine, running the very same action from the Frontend controller does not cause Magento to hang like this.

Any solutions to keep my method in Admin and while this method is running, rest of the admin should stay usable?
Longest time this process runs is about 4-5 hours and it imports products. Yes I do have cron also set up, but I would like to give the user the ability to init processes at will also.

Answer 1

Have to answer this myself:

Solution is mega simple:

call this right before the long process (make sure that you have done manipulating the session data before calling this method, otherwise errors may occur)

session_write_close();

And voila, you can run multiple processes at the same time!