I'm trying to create a daemon in python. I've found the following question, which has some good resources in it which I am currently following, but I'm curious as to why a double fork is necessary. I've scratched around google and found plenty of resources declaring that one is necessary, but not why.
Some mention that it is to prevent the daemon from acquiring a controlling terminal. How would it do this without the second fork? What are the repercussions?
Looking at the code referenced in the question, the justification is:
Fork a second child and exit immediately to prevent zombies. This causes the second child process to be orphaned, making the init process responsible for its cleanup. And, since the first child is a session leader without a controlling terminal, it's possible for it to acquire one by opening a terminal in the future (System V- based systems). This second fork guarantees that the child is no longer a session leader, preventing the daemon from ever acquiring a controlling terminal.
So it is to ensure that the daemon is re-parented onto init (just in case the process kicking off the daemon is long lived), and removes any chance of the daemon reacquiring a controlling tty. So if neither of these cases apply, then one fork should be sufficient. "Unix Network Programming - Stevens" has a good section on this.