getting a script into the background

[Skaperen]

i have done this, before, in C. i'd like to have my script run itself in the background, with the foreground exiting back to the shell. would it be good enough to just have a copy of itself run through the multiprocessing module and have the parent just exit? should i used an intermediary child process? any general suggestions? any pre-written code?

another aspect of this is that ALL other processes for that user will be terminated soon. this could lead to strange effects Python might not be prepared to handle.