This does work for Proc::Daemon. Anything you want to do that involves file descriptors should be setup after the Init, which avoids a lot of problems. For example, what if your process forks several times, and each child then runs Proc::Daemon::Init()? They will all inherit the same filehandle, which can be annoying for some modules (if I recall correctly the biggest problem with Log::Log4perl is likely to be log entries that overlap) and disastrous for others (DBI handles in particular are something you want to make sure that your child processes aren't trying to share).