I think the answer by sauoq will most likely be the right one.

I just wanted to chime in with something else. Your code is assuming that fork() always succeeds (a dangerous assumption). Remember that it will return undef upon failure. A failure can be triggered by many events outside of your control, so you should be prepared to deal with them gracefully.

I offer you this substitute code instead:

use strict;
use warnings;

use constant FORK_WAIT => 2;
use constant MAX_ATTEMPTS => 10;
our $attempt = 0;

my $pid = undef;

while (not defined ($pid = fork())) {
    die "Too many failed fork() attempts: $!\n"
        if ++$attempt > MAX_ATTEMPTS;
    warn "fork() failed: $!\n";
    sleep $FORK_WAIT;
}

if ($pid) {

# I'm the father

} else {

# I'm the son

}

[download]
Hope this helps,

Edit: Thanks to wtp for the correction in the Perl's fork() behavior.

In reply to Re: $SIG{INT} unlink problem by fokat
in thread $SIG{INT} unlink problem by Ferret

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