Python and Daemons

[Cameron Laird]

In article <mailman.1014484778.28709.python-list at python.org>,
Justin Sheehy  <justin at iago.org> wrote:
>mrchameleon at hotmail.com (Chris Reay) writes:
>
>>> This is what I use:
>>> 
>> ... and an attribution to W. Richard Stevens is also considered good mojo.
>
>True enough.  Everyone who is going to do any serious network
>programming or much of anything on UNIX should read his books.
>
>A few of his idioms have become so standard that I sometimes
>forget to make the attribution explicit.
>
>Thank you, Richard.  You are missed.
			.
			.
			.
'Worth repeating.  See <URL: http://www.kohala.com/start/ >
for details.

I'll add a few words on the subject of daemons.  Daemons
roughly correspond to what Win* people call "services".
Some Unixois use the word loosely to mean, "long-running
process" or even, in an extreme case, "anything in the
background".  Stevens' heritage generally intends "daemon"
only in a more restricted sense, involving these notions,
but also including specific signal- and I/O-handling qual-
ifications, and umask and process group leader assignment.

The first surprise Pythoneers typically have in "daemonizing",
though, is to discover an unsuspected dependence on environ-
ment variables.  Daemons typically run disconnected from any
TTY, and they also have minimal environment dictionaries (to
mix metaphors slightly).  The latter often flushes out
forgotten assumptions about PATH, *LIB*PATH, and so on.
-- 

Cameron Laird <Cameron at Lairds.com>
Business:  http://www.Phaseit.net
Personal:  http://starbase.neosoft.com/~claird/home.html