Make your own daemon

A fantastic article on swatch (http://www.linux-mag.com/id/7807) included this delightfully simple framework for rolling your own daemons. If you take a moment to read it, you'll see a lot of unix design principles relating in perfect harmony:

#!/bin/sh 

# Simple Log Watcher Program  

case "$1" in 'start')   

/usr/bin/swatch --daemon --config-file=/etc/swatch.conf --tail-file=/var/log/auth.log --pid-file=/var/run/swatch.pid   

;; 

'stop')   PID=`cat /var/run/swatch.pid`   kill $PID   

;; 

*)   echo "Usage: $0 { start | stop }   

;; 

esac 

exit 0