Dear Bloodnok and Almut,

Thanks to your help.

The code that works after using setsid and closing the std* as suggested is the following returning immediately. 
my $pid = fork;
if ( defined $pid ) {
   unless ($pid) {
       # Detach from parent
       setsid or  print("Can't detach from parent. Copy log and notify
+ cvs admin: $!");
       close STDOUT;
       close STDERR;
       close STDIN;
       exec "perl ${script_dir}/auto_merge.pl $gUSER $lBranch";
       die "Failed exec auto_merge.pl\nPlease copy log and notify cvs 
+admin\n\nExec failed: $!\n";
       exit 1;
   }
} 
..
..
exit 0;

[download]

Thanks a lot for your shared wisdom :)
live

In reply to Re: Child keeps parent from returning...? by l1ve2love
in thread Child keeps parent from returning...? by l1ve2love

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.