Package: daemonize (1.7.8-4 and others)

tool to run a command as a daemon

As defined in W. Richard Stevens’ 1990 book, UNIX Network Programming (Addison-Wesley, 1990), a daemon is “a process that executes ‘in the background’ i.e., without an associated terminal or login shell) either waiting for some event to occur, or waiting to perform some specified task on a periodic basis.” Upon startup, a typical daemon program will:

 * Close all open file descriptors (especially standard input, standard output
   and standard error)
 * Change its working directory to the root filesystem, to ensure that it
   doesn’t tie up another filesystem and prevent it from being unmounted
 * Reset its umask value
 * Run in the background (i.e., fork)
 * Disassociate from its process group (usually a shell), to insulate itself
   from signals (such as HUP) sent to the process group
 * Ignore all terminal I/O signals
 * Disassociate from the control terminal (and take steps not to reacquire one)
 * Handle any SIGCLD signals

Most programs that are designed to be run as daemons do that work for themselves. However, you’ll occasionally run across one that does not. When you must run a daemon program that does not properly make itself into a true Unix daemon, you can use daemonize to force it to run as a true daemon.

This page is also available in the following languages (How to set the default document language):