From: PerlFAQ Server on
This is an excerpt from the latest version perlfaq8.pod, which
comes with the standard Perl distribution. These postings aim to
reduce the number of repeated questions as well as allow the community
to review and update the answers. The latest version of the complete
perlfaq is at http://faq.perl.org .

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8.36: How do I fork a daemon process?

If by daemon process you mean one that's detached (disassociated from
its tty), then the following process is reported to work on most Unixish
systems. Non-Unix users should check their Your_OS::Process module for
other solutions.

* Open /dev/tty and use the TIOCNOTTY ioctl on it. See tty for
details. Or better yet, you can just use the POSIX::setsid()
function, so you don't have to worry about process groups.

* Change directory to /

* Reopen STDIN, STDOUT, and STDERR so they're not connected to the old
tty.

* Background yourself like this:

fork && exit;

The Proc::Daemon module, available from CPAN, provides a function to
perform these actions for you.



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