I've been playing around with SGI::FAM.pm for the last few days for a project of mine. I've decided that I want to fork off subprocesses of my main program to deal with the files that SGI::FAM reports.

This is all works great when I set: 
$SIG{CHLD} = IGNORE;

[download]
but when I set: 

$SIG{CHLD} = \&reap_the_children;

sub reap_the_children {
  my $child;

  while (($child = waitpid(-1, &WNOHANG)) > 0) {
    my $file   = $seen{$child};
    print "Deleting $file from seen hash\n"; 
    print "Deleting $child from seen hash\n"; 
    delete $seen{$file};
    delete $seen{$child};
  }
$SIG{CHLD} = \&reap_the_children;
}

[download]
Here is my output:

Forking child from 18263 (parent process)
Forked 19241 (child process)
19241:pureftpd.vevo3w (child does stuff here and then exits)
Deleting pureftpd.vevo3w from seen hash (cleanup here)
Deleting 19241 from seen hash (cleanup here)
SGI::FAM: No child processes at ./watcher.pl line 30 (program dies here)

When I set $SIG{CHLD} to ignore, the program runs indefinitely doing what it does. I really think I need the ability to do some extra things in the reaping of the children, but it seems to be interfering with the normal operation of SGI::FAM.pm.

Can anyone help??
Thanks alot.

In reply to Fork and Reap by hubb0r

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