How to control a background job

Hi.

I could use some advice on the best way to control a background job.
The interface to the job has two goals: first, to allow for text based
control; second to allow a simple interface that nicer GUI could drive
(which I don't intend to write).  What's the best way to do it?

The job I'd like to conntrol is btslave, a BT client that typically will
run in the background.  It's primary job is helping your normal BT
client download faster (as a slave repeater).  It needs to be told when
to join a torrent, or it wont know that you're downloading.  Right now,
I kill the job, and restart it with the torrent file name on the command
line.

Several options come to mind:

I could just parse user commands from the command line, like ftp.
However, as a demon running in the background, I don't know how to get
access to stdin and stdout.  I could also use a config file, and send a
SIGHUP signal to btslave to have it re-read it.  That's not very user
friendly.  I could support a telnet port, and get access to a command
line interface that way.  I could support a ssh connection directly to
btslave.  Is this hard?  Portable?  I could provide an http interface,
the way swat does.  That's a lot of work.  I could support a command
line interface, but enable one copy of btslave to control another over a
TCP connection.

There are other permutations.  How would you guys do it?

Thanks,
Bill




 
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