You should almost always be able to assign a pid(name) to the process, and even assign the location for the pidfile, itself. This will give you the "handle" you need to control the process in most any way you choose. :)

Best wishes.

--Chris

UPDATE: from perlvar 
$PROCESS_ID
$PID
$$

The process number of the Perl running this script. Though you can set
+ this variable, doing so is generally discouraged, although it can be
+ invaluable for some testing purposes. It will be reset automatically
+ across fork() calls.

Note for Linux and Debian GNU/kFreeBSD users: Before Perl v5.16.0 perl
+ would emulate POSIX semantics on Linux systems using LinuxThreads, a
+ partial implementation of POSIX Threads that has since been supersed
+ed by the Native POSIX Thread Library (NPTL).

LinuxThreads is now obsolete on Linux, and caching getpid() like this 
+made embedding perl unnecessarily complex (since you'd have to manual
+ly update the value of $$), so now $$ and getppid() will always retur
+n the same values as the underlying C library.

Debian GNU/kFreeBSD systems also used LinuxThreads up until and includ
+ing the 6.0 release, but after that moved to FreeBSD thread semantics
+, which are POSIX-like.

To see if your system is affected by this discrepancy check if getconf
+ GNU_LIBPTHREAD_VERSION | grep -q NPTL returns a false value. NTPL th
+reads preserve the POSIX semantics.

Mnemonic: same as shells.

[download]
See also: How do I know my process id, from within perl script 
Hey. I'm not completely useless. I can be used as a bad example.

In reply to Re^5: The proper way to execute echo aabbcc >> file in backround by taint
in thread The proper way to execute echo aabbcc >> file in backround by young_monk_love_perl

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