running nohupped commands

[Mark Price]

Hi, there

It seems this basic message has already been sent, but it didn't show up 
in my mailbox, so here's the rerun.

First, introduction

I'm using debian and cfengine to run a network of weather sensors for 
the Applied Global Systems Lab at UNF.

I've been trying to get cfengine to take over doing a stop-start on some 
processes that are running under the nohup command, but so far have been 
unsuccessful.
I'm using the "shellcommands" group.  Every attempt has had the result 
that a manual run of cfagent --no-splay never dies until I kill the 
shell commands I have run, and that the commands weren't actually 
working properly, some of them died and nohup.out was not being written to.
My first attempt was to just run the command, which just failed.
My second attempt was "command owner=0 group=0", since that's what it 
needed (output said it was running as
uid=gid=-1). 
My third attempt was     "command owner=0 group=0 useshell=false 
preview=false inform=false"
My fourth attempt was   "detachtty pipename command"
My fifth    attempt:          "screen -dmS pipename command"


Is there another strategy I can take? 

Thanks

Mark Price