using fork() in CGI script

[Mike Miller]

All:

I have a CGI script which forks off a new process to perform lengthy
operations, and then uses the parent to display a short message in
the browser indicating that the process has begun.  

However, I'm finding that the browser tries to continue loading until
the child has completed.  How can I stop this (or can I?)  I want the
parent to print the message and exit, but the browser waits for the
child anyway...  UGH...

   use strict;
   use CGI qw(:all);
   $|++;
   
   my $pid = fork;
   if ($pid == 0) {    # CHILD
      sleep 30;
      # Do stuff that takes a long time.
      exit;
   }
 
   print header;
   print start_html;
   print "<h1>Running command.  Thanks.</h1>\n";
   exit;

I'm guessing I need to send some special kind of headers to the server
or something, but I really haven't a clue.  Any ideas?

Thanks,

-Mike