Detecting problems in a forked process

[James Colannino]

Hey everyone.  I'm writing a small application in Python that uses 
os.fork() to create a separate process in which another application is 
run in the background.  The problem is that I need to know whether or 
not that separate application managed to start and return from within 
the parent appropriately.  Here's, roughly, a pseudo example of what I 
want to do (I know the code itself is not correct):

def function():

    pid = os.fork()

    if pid:
         do parent stuff
    else:
         try:
              execute the application
         exeption:
              somehow return -1 from within the parent process

#try to start another application in the background from within a forked 
process
if (function() == -1):
    fail

Is there a way that I can do this?  I thought, only for a *VERY* brief 
second, about cheating my way around this with a global variable, but 
then I realized that this wouldn't work due to the fact that I will have 
multiple forks doing the same thing at the same time.  Thanks in advance :)

James

-- 
My blog: http://www.crazydrclaw.com/
My homepage: http://james.colannino.org/

"If Carpenters made houses the way programmers design programs, the first woodpecker to come along would destroy all of civilization." --Computer Proverb