Hi!

While I can't come up with a snipplet solution without some studying myself, maybe I can help with some plain brainstorming ideas (/msg me if you really, really want me to dig in ;)

• Maybe plain singals will do? Apache, for example uses kill -USR1 `cat pidfile` to be signaled a change in it's config files.
• I heard a workmate of mine mumble about using alarms to singal processes, but I don't know the details.
• I wonder, do you have to do the writing out of status info in the interactive program, or could you have a seperate program simply be called by the retrieving program?
• You could also use a listener to listen on a TCP port for incoming dump requests (and even answer on that socket, instead of writing things out to an intermediate file).

Just a few ideas,
so long,
Flexx