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DAEMON(8) FreeBSD System Manager's Manual DAEMON(8)
NAME
daemon - run detached from the controlling terminal
SYNOPSIS
daemon [-cfHrS] [-p child_pidfile] [-P supervisor_pidfile] [-t title]
[-u user] [-m output_mask] [-o output_file] [-s syslog_priority]
[-T syslog_tag] [-l syslog_facility] [-R restart_delay_seconds]
command arguments ...
DESCRIPTION
The daemon utility detaches itself from the controlling terminal and
executes the program specified by its arguments. Privileges may be
lowered to the specified user. The output of the daemonized process may
be redirected to syslog and to a log file.
The options are as follows:
-c, --change-dir
Change the current working directory to the root ("/").
-f, --close-fds
Redirect standard input, standard output and standard error to
/dev/null. When this option is used together with any of the
options related to file or syslog output, the standard file
descriptors are first redirected to /dev/null, then stdout and/or
stderr is redirected to a file or to syslog as specified by the
other options.
-H, --sighup
Close output_file and re-open it when signal SIGHUP is received,
for interoperability with newsyslog(1) and similar log rotation /
archival mechanisms. If --output-file is not specified, this
flag is ignored.
-S, --syslog
Enable syslog output. This is implicitly applied if other syslog
parameters are provided. The default values are daemon, notice,
and daemon for facility, priority, and tag, respectively.
-o, --output-file output_file
Append output from the daemonized process to output_file. If the
file does not exist, it is created with permissions 0600. When
this option is used together with options --change-dir and
--sighup the absolute path needs to be provided to ensure daemon
can re-open the file after a SIGHUP.
-m, --output-mask output_mask
Redirect output from the child process stdout (1), stderr (2), or
both (3). This value specifies what is sent to syslog and the
log file. The default is 3.
-p, --child-pidfile child_pidfile
Write the ID of the created process into the child_pidfile using
the pidfile(3) functionality. The program is executed in a
spawned child process while the daemon waits until it terminates
to keep the child_pidfile locked and removes it after the process
exits. The child_pidfile owner is the user who runs the daemon
process exits. The supervisor_pidfile owner is the user who runs
the daemon regardless of whether the --user option is used or
not.
-r, --restart
Supervise and restart the program after a one-second delay if it
has been terminated.
-R, --restart-delay restart_delay_seconds
Supervise and restart the program after the specified delay if it
has been terminated.
-t, --title title
Set the title for the daemon process. The default is the
daemonized invocation.
-u, --user user
Login name of the user to execute the program under. Requires
adequate superuser privileges.
-s, --syslog-priority syslog_priority
These priorities are accepted: emerg, alert, crit, err, warning,
notice, info, and debug. The default is notice.
-l, --syslog-facility syslog_facility
These facilities are accepted: auth, authpriv, console, cron,
daemon, ftp, kern, lpr, mail, news, ntp, security, syslog, user,
uucp, and local0, ..., local7. The default is daemon.
-T, --syslog-tag syslog_tag
Set the tag which is appended to all syslog messages. The
default is daemon.
If any of the options --child-pidfile, --output-mask, --restart,
--restart-delay, --supervisor-pidfile, --syslog, --syslog-facility
--syslog-priority, --syslog-tag, or --output, are specified, the program
is executed in a spawned child process. The daemon waits until it
terminates to keep the pid file(s) locked and removes them after the
process exits or restarts the program. In this case if the monitoring
daemon receives software termination signal (SIGTERM) it forwards it to
the spawned process. Normally it will cause the child to exit, remove
the pidfile(s) and then terminate.
If neither file or syslog output are selected, all output is redirected
to the daemon process and written to stdout. The --close-fds option may
be used to suppress the stdout output completely.
The --supervisor-pidfile option is useful combined with the --restart
option as supervisor_pidfile contains the ID of the supervisor not the
child. This is especially important if you use --restart in an rc script
as the --child-pidfile option will give you the child's ID to signal when
you attempt to stop the service, causing daemon to restart the child.
EXIT STATUS
The daemon utility exits 1 if an error is returned by the daemon(3)
library routine, 2 if child_pidfile or supervisor_pidfile is requested,
but cannot be opened, 3 if process is already running (pidfile exists and
is locked), 4 if syslog_priority is not accepted, 5 if syslog_facility is
not accepted, 6 if output_mask is not within the accepted range, 7 if
SEE ALSO
nohup(1), setregid(2), setreuid(2), daemon(3), exec(3), pidfile(3),
termios(4), tty(4)
HISTORY
The daemon utility first appeared in FreeBSD 4.7.
FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11 January 14, 2021 FreeBSD 14.0-RELEASE-p11