Instead of messing with $SIG{CHLD}, either

• Double-fork, or
• spend some time waiting at various points in your top-level loop

For example, the following code waits for any terminated kid:

       ## first, reap any zombies so child CPU is proper:
       {
         my $kid = waitpid(-1, 1);
         if ($kid > 0) {
           redo;
         }
       }
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This comes from my WebTechniques column on logging to a DBI database.

-- Randal L. Schwartz, Perl hacker