Question

is there a way for a forked child to examine another forked child so that, if the other forked child takes more time than usual to perform its chores, the first child may perform predefined steps?
if so, sample code will be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Yes. Simply fork the process to be watched, from the process to watch it.

if (fork() == 0) {
    // we are the watcher
    pid_t watchee_pid = fork();
    if (watchee_pid != 0) {
        // wait and/or handle timeout
        int status;
        waitpid(watchee_pid, &status, WNOHANG);
    } else {
        // we're being watched. do stuff
    }
} else {
    // original process
}

To emphasise: There are 3 processes. The original, the watcher process (that handles timeout etc.) and the actual watched process.