debugging help

I am currently running apache_1.3.26 w/ mod_ssl_2.8.10 on a Linux
2.4 platform in proxy mode. The problem is that the browser frequently
displays "Page can not be displayed errors" every few SSL proxied pages.
Traffic analysis shows that the proxy has received the page request and is
fetching it from the remote site. However, it is not returning it to the
client. The disconnect is quick so it does not appear to be any form of
TCP/IP time out. It could possibly be a memory leak issue since there is
some correlation between load and the frequency of breaks.
The other problem I am encountering is an inability to get gdb to
attach to the process for debugging while logged in as root. After
building a binary with the "-ggdb" flag, I try to attach and get the
following:

Attaching to program: /usr/local/apache/bin/httpd, process 22991
ptrace: Operation not permitted.

An strace will produce:

execve("./httpd", ["./httpd"], [/* 21 vars */]) = 0
strace: ptrace(PTRACE_TRACEME, ...): Operation not permitted

My questions are: Does anyone know of SSL problems with Apache in
proxy mode? Does anyone know how I might be able to get ptrace to work on
these servers?

thanks,
-Peleus