Question

I need to reload Squid daemon, the solution is:

system("/etc/init.d/squid reload\n"); 

but I think that there must be a more efficient solution than using the “system” call, what C instruction should I use?

Thank you very much.

Answer 1

You can use fork and exec if you really need a faster solution, but since the squid init script has to be run, and Squid has to do the work, any optimizations of your C program will only give a really marginal improvement.

EDIT:

On the other hand (after having looked at the Squid manual), some daemons react to signals, and Squid seems to do so. For example, it re-read its configuration files if you send a HUP signal to it:

kill(process-id-of-the-squid-dameon, SIGHUP);