I have achieved this by using curl_exec() to issue another HTTP request on the same server. By setting the timeout to a small number I regain control and can continue with other things while the new process runs to completion. Here is my code: $url = 'HTTP://' .$_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] .'/newprocess.php'; // launch this script in another server process, but let it run $ch = curl_init($url); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, TRUE); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_CONNECTTIMEOUT, 5); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_TIMEOUT, 2); $content = curl_exec($ch); if ($content === FALSE) { $curl_errno = curl_errno($ch); if ($curl_errno == 28) { // timeout - ignore } else { $curl_error = curl_error($ch); $errors[] = "CURL error $curl_errno: $curl_error"; } // if } // if curl_close($ch); Hope this helps. -- Tony Marston http://www.tonymarston.net http://www.radicore.org ""bruce"" <bedouglas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:156301c97d82$b33698d0$0301a8c0@xxxxxxxxxxxx >A simple question (or so I thought). > > Does php allow an app to create/start a process/application that can > continue to run on its own, after the initiating program/app terminates? > > It appears that the spawning/forking functions might work, but the child > apps would be in a zombie status, and couldn't be killed by an external > program. > > Basically, I'd like to create a bunch of test apps/processes, and then to > be > able to kill them by a separate process if the apps take too long to run.. > > So.. thoughts/comments would be appreciated! > > thanks > > -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php