It sometimes looked like the child() from fork() returned earlier
then the fork() call -- is that possible?

   if(li->status == FE_NOT) {
      svc_report_status(li->abs_path, "Nothing to execute :-)");
      /*  
       * probably a problem: we exit too fast, cinit does not yet have us in
       * the process list. is that possible? => catch with sleep 
       */
      // sleep(2);
      _exit(0);                 /* nothing there? fine! */
   }