[mod_python] Spawning Long Running Processes

Hello,
What is the best way to spawn a process from a mod_python that could  
take several hours to complete?

I am trying to write a handler that when accessed for the first time  
spawns a long running process that writes to a file. On subsequent  
accesses, the handler would show the contents of the file produced by  
the long process, refreshing the page occasionally with meta refresh  
tags.

I have had a stab at achieving this by double forking the process.  
This however, has had the disadvantage that for really long running  
processes   the forked processes still seem to be bound to port 80  
thus preventing httpd daemon restarts. A problem when you want to  
update apache configuration settings.

What am I doing wrong? And what is the accepted way for spawning long  
lived processes from mod_python?

I would be very grateful if someone could point me to some source  
examples that show how to achieve this.

Kind Regards,
Michael Rushton