sub spawn {
   my ( $interesting, $vars, $here ) = @_;
   my $pid = 0;

   # The parent process returns the spawned process's pid.
   # The spawned process does the work
   if ( $pid = fork ) {
       return $pid;
   }
   else {
        # do lots of interesting things
        # Either exit or exec - just make sure the kid
        # never returns.
        exit 0;
   }
}

my $stop_all = 0;
my $stop_kid = 0;
my $kid_pid = 0;

# Trying to minimize my risk here, I simply set a variable
# and let the later code handle it.  It isn't perfect,
# but it works.

# SIGINT stops the kid.  SIGHUP stops everything
$SIG{SIGHUP} = sub { $stop_all = 1; }
$SIG{INT} = sub { $stop_kid = 1; }

# This loops forever.  You may not want that :)  The 5 second sleep
# also keeps you from eating too many CPU cycles.  Note it 
# will also mean a maximum 5 second delay between sending the
# SIGINT or SIGHUP and anything happening.  If that is not
# acceptable, use select(undef,undef,undef,0.5)
while( 1 ) {
    sleep 5;
    if ( $stop_all ) {
       kill 9, $kid_pid if ( $kid_pid && $kid_pid != -1 );
       exit;
    }

    # Race conditions ahead!  Don't lean too heavily on the
    # CTRL-C key
    if ( $stop_kid ) {
       kill 9, $kid_pid if ( $kid_pid > 0 );
       $stop_kid = 0;
    }
    # I am a bad man and do not use POSIX.  The 1 may
    # change depending on the OS - this works for
    # Solaris and FreeBSD
    my $dpid = waitpid( -1, 1 );
    $kid_pid = spawn() if ( $dpid == $kid_pid || $dpid = -1 );
}