Re: Persistent perl

[Argel]

Sounds like you want to make it a daemon:

use IO::Socket;
use POSIX qw(WNOHANG setsid);

sub daemonize {
        $SIG{CHLD} = 'IGNORE';        # Configure to autoreap zombies
        die "Can't fork" unless defined ( my $child = fork );  # FORK 
+<<<<<<<<<<<<
        CORE::exit(0) if $child;      # Parent exits
        setsid();                     # Become session leader
        open( STDIN,  "</dev/null" ); # Detach STDIN from shell
        open( STDOUT, ">/dev/null" ); # Detach STDOUT from shell
        open( STDERR, ">&STDOUT"   ); # Detach STDERR from shell
        chdir '/tmp';                 # Change working directory
        umask(0);                     # Reset umask
        $ENV{PATH} = '/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin';  # Reset PATH
        }

Note: Verify your system supports autoreapping of zombies.

You can read more in this thread.

[njcodewarrior]

Do I have to be the superuser/sysadmin to run the daemon?

[Argel]

The code doesn't do anything special that other programs do not do for other reasons. Common things like manipulating filehandles, changing environment variables, and forking. There are no daemons under UNIX in the stict sense. It's just a concept, a term used to set expectations for the reader. So to answer your question any user can do it (though, other aspects of your program may require root).