We need more information. Is it a daemon process which must live after the cgi process is gone? Does it exit with a return code you must check? Do you need to capture the processeses ouput? Each of these is done differently.

The perlfunc manpage has a useful introduction which lists functions by category. "Processes and Process Groups" is a good start.

Update: tid, I wrote a node on starting a daemon process at Re: Daemons???. Your daemon is probably dying because it hasn't made itself a process group leader before the parent exits. It is then inherited by init, which ruthlessly kills widows and orphans. 2: You may want to arrange for your daemon to restart or reread config on, say, SIGHUP. Then kill 'HUP', $pid; would suffice.

After Compline,
Zaxo