in reply to
How do I start a long process with a short visit to a URL?
Something like this:
if (fork() == 0)
{
close STDIN;
close STDOUT;
close STDERR;
do_long_running_thing();
exit 0;
}
print_out_web_response();
Now, granted, I missed a bunch of error conditions around
fork, as well as omitting the
Highlander Maneuver, but that's the basic idea.
Note that you can reopen stdout and/or stderr and redirect them to a file, or you can pipe them into something that'll send you an email, whatever you want. If nothing else, you may want to reopen to /dev/null, just to sure you don't confuse subprocesses if you call any.