What the best way to programmatically run a process in the background?

[hyperdrive]

Hi, i would like you to explain me whats the best way to programmatically run a process in the background. I have read lots of stuff but most of it is related with the use of & and de system() function.
I think the most correct way to put a process in the background is to use fork() and then kill the father as the children will continue running, also could turn the process in to a daemon.
if someone could help i would appreciate it.


Thanks in advanced.

[Rubberman]

Use fork() and exec(). See the man page for the exec functions: man 3 exec
It is not advised to use the system() call to do this since it also starts a shell in order to fork/exec the program you want to run in the background. You don't want to kill the parent process because that will usually kill the children as well. You keep the father running, and have it wait on the children until they all terminate, then it can terminate, otherwise you will likely end up with a bunch of "zombie" processes and lose system resources over time. To run a process as a daemon (server), you need it to mask out SIGHUP events, and redirect stdin/stdout/stderr to files or /dev/null.

[coopstah13]

two forks will make a process a daemon, which should probably do what you want

Re: fork twice to prevent zombie process