[Hampshire] preventing apache timeout on long-duration page …

I'm generating a web page (with Perl CGI) that may involve a
long-running Oracle query. This can sometimes cause the script to go
quiet for long enough that Apache times it out. At present I'm able to
stop that by sending something to the screen after retrieving every
so-many rows, but this leads to screen clutter.

I'd quite like to be able to put some indicator to the same screen
area each time, a la apt-get, e.g. "[1000/45096]" then "[2000/45096]"
(where the 45096 is, for example, the total number of rows to be
processed in a particular query) and each indicator overwrites the
previous one. .

I'm trying stuff like:
<STYLE TYPE="text/css">
<!--
#counter {position:absolute; top:0px; left:0px;}
-->
</STYLE>

followed by
    if (($DLcount%1000)==0) {
        print qq( <div id="counter"> &nbsp;</div> );
        print qq( <div id="counter">$DLcount / $size </div> );
    }

but (i) the divs don't seem to appear until the end of the script's
run when they all arrive in a rush; (ii) the earlier ones don't get
blanked out by the later ones so one ends up with a solid black blob
on the screen; (iii) I don't really like using an absolute position.

Any CSS guru got a suggestion?

thanks,
victor