Hi Monks,

I know it's Friday but I hope there is someone out there can help me with my situation. I have a cgi file that needs to execute another file without having the browser wait for the outcome of the execution. Here is a little diagram:
browser->request->cgi->execute another program
                    |
                  return submitted successful message and 
                  close connection without waiting for the                 
                  other process

The code that I have is not working like the way I want because when I make the request to the cgi file, the browser waits for all processes to finish before closing the connection. I just need to execute "launch" and I do not need it to wait for it to finish before sending back the "successful submit" message. I think I am really close and this will probably involve forking and the use of exec() or even system() but this is what I have so far:

I have edited the code according to runrig's suggestion but I'm not sure if I did it right. 
chdir '/'        or die "Can't chdir to /: $!";
open STDIN, '/dev/null' or die "Can't read /dev/null: $!";
open STDOUT, '>/dev/null' or die "Can't write to /dev/null: $!";

my $pid = fork();

if (not defined $pid) {
    print "resources not available.\n";
}
elsif ($pid == 0) {
    #this is where I launch the other executable
    system("/usr/local/bin/launch myfile &") or die("Cannot execute la
+unch: $!\n");
exit;
}
else {
    setsid or die "Can't start a new session: $!";
    open STDERR, '>&STDOUT'    or die "Can't dup stdout: $!";
    #this is the return message
    print "Your file has been sent successfully.  You will be notified
+ via email once it has been completed.  Thank you.";
    print end_html();
    exit;
}

[download]

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks in advance.

newb

In reply to Fork() and exec() by axl163

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