Reading from the fifo

Hi,
I'm having some trouble reading from the fifo.
Because I get the following in my console:

IOError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/tmp/apkg-fifo5212' # This is
from python
tail: write error: Broken pipe
tail: write error: Broken pipe

I think I know what's the problem: My 'real' frontend wants to read from the
fifo although it's not started by autopackage. Because what my program does,
it spawns a process(package install my.package) with the standard
environment variables altered so that my 'fake' frontend gets started. My
'fake' frontend writes it's second argument(the fifo) to a certain file, and
my main program picks that up, and tries to act as the 'real' frontend.
I think the problem lies in the fact that the fifo-file expires when my
'fake' frontend finishes(because it only writes to a file). Could that be my
problem, or could it be something else? I just want to be certain.
Thanks in advance,
Hylke