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DAEMON(8) 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] [-C restart_count] command arguments ... DESCRIPTION The daemon utility detaches itself from the controlling terminal and exe- cutes 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, --restart-count restart_count Restart the process at most restart_count times. When zero is specified, daemon will exit. The maximum restart count is 128. This option is used together with option --restart. -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 op- tions related to file or syslog output, the standard file descrip- tors are first redirected to /dev/null, then stdout and/or stderr is redirected to a file or to syslog as specified by the other op- tions. -H, --sighup Close output_file and re-open it when signal SIGHUP is received, for interoperability with newsyslog(8) and similar log rotation / archival mechanisms. If --output-file is not specified, this flag is ignored. -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 local facilities from local0 to local7. The default is daemon. -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. -M, --output-file-mode mode Specify the file mode to use when creating the output_file. The mode is interpreted using chmod(1) style semantics. This option is useful when the daemonized process or external log collectors re- quire group or world access to the output file. The default is 0600. -o, --output-file output_file Append output from the daemonized process to output_file. If the file does not exist, it is created with the default file mode. 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. -P, --supervisor-pidfile supervisor_pidfile Write the ID of the daemon process into the supervisor_pidfile us- ing the pidfile(3) functionality. The program is executed in a spawned child process while the daemon waits until it terminates to keep the supervisor_pidfile locked and removes it after the process exits. The supervisor_pidfile owner is the user who runs the daemon regardless of whether the --user option is used or not. -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 regardless of whether the --user option is used or not. -R, --restart-delay restart_delay_seconds Supervise and restart the program after the specified delay if it has been terminated. Valid values are 1-31536000 (up to 1 year). -r, --restart Supervise and restart the program after a one-second delay if it has been terminated. -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. -s, --syslog-priority syslog_priority These priorities are accepted: emerg, alert, crit, err, warning, notice, info, and debug. The default is notice. -T, --syslog-tag syslog_tag Set the tag which is appended to all syslog messages. The default is daemon. -t, --title title Set the title for the daemon process. The default is the daemo- nized invocation. -u, --user user Login name of the user to execute the program under. Environment variables HOME, USER, and SHELL are set accordingly. Requires ade- quate superuser privileges. 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 soft- ware 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 op- tion 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 at- tempt 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 output_file cannot be opened for appending, and otherwise 0. DIAGNOSTICS If the command cannot be executed, an error message is printed to standard error. The exact behavior depends on the logging parameters and the --close-fds flag. 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 ports 15.quarterly January 28, 2026 DAEMON(8)
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | EXIT STATUS | DIAGNOSTICS | SEE ALSO | HISTORY
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