Proc::Pidfile is a very simple OO interface which manages a pidfile for the current process. You can pass the path to a pidfile to use as an argument to the constructor, or you can let Proc::Pidfile choose one (basically, "/var/run/$basename", if you can write to /var/run, otherwise "/$tmpdir/$basename"). WWW: http://search.cpan.org/dist/Proc-Pidfile/