-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- daemons backgrounding, Nico Schottelius 2005-06-12 (Last Modified: 2005-10-15) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0. Definition A daemon is a program which runs in the background, not having a tty associated necesserally. Running in background does not mean it has to background (fork()) itself, but that you cannot control it directly from a shell. 1. Daemons and cinit Respawning daemons is a bit more difficult, as daemons do often fork() (go to background, the calling process exits). This way cinit cannot watch it directly. The first solution is to check the documentation of your daemon program, if it has a switch to disable forking The following daemons / servers are known to avoid backgrounding easily: acpid [x86 power management]: -f (undocumentated but works) asterisk [pbx]: -f bind [dns server/caching]: -f cardmgr [pcmcia/cardbus]: -f cron (vixie) [schedular]: -f cupsd [printer server]: -f or -F dhclient [dhcp client]: -d dhcp3 (isc) [dhcp server]: -f distccd [compile server]: normal behaviour fam [file alteration monitor]:-f fcron [schedular]: -f frox [ftp proxy]: "NoDetach" in config gdm [display manager]: -nodaemon hybrid [irc server]: -foreground icecast2 [sound streamer]: normal behaviour mini-lpd [printer server]: normal behaviour metalog [log server]: normal behaviour monotone [vcs]: normal behaviour mpd [music server]: --no-daemon nessusd ["security server"]: normal behaviour ntpd [time server]: -n oidentd [identd server]: -i oops [http proxy]: normal behaviour openssh [ssh server]: -D openvpn [vpn server]: normal behaviour pbbuttonsd [power management]:normal behaviour proftpd [ftp server]: -n qmail [mta]: normal behaviour rsync ["file server"]: --no-detach silcd ["secure chat server"]: -F, --foreground slapd [ldap]: -d snmpd [snmp daemon]: -f svnserve [vcs]: --foreground syslogd [log server]: -n syslog-ng [log server]: -F tcpserver [super server]: normal behaviour udhcpc [dhcp client]: normal behaviour vsftpd [ftp server]: normal behaviour (or: config: background=no) xinetd [super server]: -dontfork Those are the daemons that do not offer the possibility (as of release 0.2): apache (only with debug mode) atd (no switch, no configuraton option) inetd (some variants) nscd (no switch, no configuraton option) portmap (only with debug mode)