i'm curious as to how one would make a perl script run as a TSR (terminate and stay resident) program?

more specifically, i'm writing a script that listens on a particular port, and I'd like to be able to start it initially (ie: "perl jdataserver.pl"), and have it print out some diagnostic info, then return user control to the command prompt, but continue running in the background.

should i need to check on it afterward, I'd call it again with a flag ("perl jdataserver.pl -i") and it would print out some status information, then return to the background.

and, should i need to stop it later, i could call it again with a *different* flag ("perl jdataserver.pl -k") to essentially do a clean kill of the process.

i was thinking i could accomplish this sort of effect with two scripts...the server script would periodically lock a file, write status information to it, then unlock it. then the script I call would check for this file, read the status info from it, and display the info...

however, i figure there *has* to be a better way to do this. any ideas?

In reply to making a perl script TSR? (on linux) by Anonymous Monk

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.