Proper way to fork() a GTK program (to exec() something)

[Paul Bunyk <paul pbunyk physics sunysb edu>]

Operating System: Linux 2.2.2 #2 SMP Thu Feb 25 13:34:47 EST 1999
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Hello, everyone!

I'm writing my first GTK program which is just a GUI wrapper
around several (large) programs which should allow one to 
specify parameters and click buttons to start one or another
program. 

Making the interface itself was a really pleasurable experience
(especially with the help of GLADE), but now I came to the hard part.

What I want to do it to fork my GUI process, in child freopen stdin/stdout
and switch stderr to a pipe (which in parent process will be printed out
in a text box) then exec my program. When I do it in straightforward way
I get "x io" and "lost x sequence" errors, especially if I try to 
call gtk_widget_show(errorDialog) from the child process. 

Are there any rules how should I do that? E.g., can I just use exit() my
child process (if something goes wrong before exec), or I should use 
gtk_exit()? 

Maybe someone has a code snippet which does something similar? I'd love
to see that! ;-)

Sincerely,

Paul

P.S. a Cc: paul@pbunyk.physics.sunysb.edu would be appreciated! :)