Double-forking Unix daemon

.gitignore

tmp
log
doc
daemon
*.swp

simple_daemon.rb

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
# == Double-forking Unix daemon
#
# Author:: Rufus Post  (mailto:rufuspost@gmail.com)
#
# === How does it work?
#
# According to Stevens's Advanced Programming in the UNIX Environment
# chapter 13, this is the procedure to make a well-behaved Unix daemon:
#
# Fork and have the parent exit. This makes the shell or boot script
# think the command is done. Also, the child process is guaranteed not
# to be a process group leader (a prerequisite for setsid next)
# Call setsid to create a new session. This does three things:
# * The process becomes a session leader of a new session
# * The process becomes the process group leader of a new process group
# * The process has no controlling terminal
# 
# Optionally fork again and have the parent exit. This guarantes that
# the daemon is not a session leader nor can it acquire a controlling
# terminal (under SVR4)
#
#  grandparent - the current process
#   \_ parent  - exits immediately
#       \_ simple daemon - writes out its pid to file
#
# Change the current working directory to / to avoid interfering with
# mounting and unmounting. By default don't bother to chdir("/") here 
# because we might to run inside APP_ROOT.
#
# Set file mode creation mask to 000 to allow creation of files with any
# required permission later. By default umask is whatever was set by the 
# parent process at startup and can be set in config.ru and config_file, 
# so making it 0000 and potentially exposing sensitive log data can be 
# bad policy.
#
# Close unneeded file descriptors inherited from the parent (there is no
# controlling terminal anyway): stdout, stderr, and stdin.
#
# Nowadays there is a file to track the PID which is used heavily by
# Linux distribution boot scripts. Be sure to write out the PID of the
# grandchild, either the return value of the second fork (step 3) or the
# value of getpid() after step 3.
#
class SimpleDaemon
  # In the directory where you want your daemon add a git submodule to
  # your project and create a daemon launcher script: 
  #
  #     #!/usr/bin/env ruby
  #
  #     require 'simple_daemon'
  #
  #     $0 = "my daemon"
  #
  #     SimpleDaemon.daemonize! ARGV[0], ARGV[1], ARGV[2]
  #
  #     loop do
  #       sleep 5
  #       puts "tick"
  #       sleep 5
  #       puts "tock"
  #     end
  #
  # make your script executable and run:
  #
  #     $ chmod +x launcher
  #     $ launcher tmp/daemon.pid log/daemon.stdout.log log/daemon.stderr.log
  #
  # check that it is running by with the following:
  #
  #     $ ps aux | grep "my daemon"
  #
  #
  def self.daemonize! pidfile, out = '/dev/null', err = '/dev/null', safe = true
    raise 'First fork failed' if (pid = fork) == -1
    exit unless pid.nil?
    Process.setsid
    raise 'Second fork failed' if (pid = fork) == -1
    exit unless pid.nil?
    kill pidfile
    write Process.pid, pidfile
    unless safe
      Dir.chdir '/'
      File.umask 0000
    end
    redirect out, err
  end

  # Attempts to write the pid of the forked process to the pid file.
  # Kills process if write unsuccesfull.
  def self.write pid, pidfile
    File.open pidfile, "w" do |f|
      f.write pid
      f.close
    end
    $stdout.puts "Daemon running with pid: #{pid}"
  rescue ::Exception => e
    raise "While writing the PID to file, unexpected #{e.class}: #{e}"
  end

  # Try and read the existing pid from the pid file and signal HUP to
  # process.
  def self.kill pidfile
    opid = open(pidfile).read.strip.to_i
    Process.kill "HUP", opid
  rescue TypeError
    $stdout.puts "#{pidfile} was empty: TypeError"
  rescue Errno::ENOENT
    $stdout.puts "#{pidfile} did not exist: Errno::ENOENT"
  rescue Errno::ESRCH
    $stdout.puts "The process #{opid} did not exist: Errno::ESRCH"
  rescue Errno::EPERM
    raise "Lack of privileges to manage the process #{opid}: Errno::EPERM"
  rescue ::Exception => e
    raise "While signaling the PID, unexpected #{e.class}: #{e}"
  end

  # Redirect file descriptors inherited from the parent.
  def self.redirect out, err
    $stdin.reopen '/dev/null'
    $stdout.reopen File.new(out, "a")
    $stderr.reopen File.new(err, "a")
    $stdout.sync = $stderr.sync = true
  end
end