These are some good thoughts. I think I need to provide some more details though. The perl script doesn't always hang. It often does, but not always. Also, there are several different scripts that all hang from time to time. Usually the first few times after a reboot work; eventually I get the hang. Making the Perl its own service is not an option because I need other features of the service. An easy way to think of this (and I've demonstrated the hang this way) is RSHing the script on a host.