Add "background" command-line switch for FTE

[kpdyer]

We should add a command-line switch to enable FTE to run in the background. At the moment we run FTE in the background by using "&" on Linux. As a byproduct, we don't output much information unless the "--debug" switch is added.

We should:
(1) Add a "-d" switch for FTE to start as a daemon.
(2) When "-d" is not specified we should be a bit more chatty, so the user knows what is going on.

[dcreager]

A heads-up on this one: the accepted way to run daemons on Linux/POSIX systems has changed over the past couple of years. The traditional way (described on this StackOverflow answer) is to use a double-fork idiom, which is probably exposed via some call in the Python standard library.

The new best practice, however, is just to run your server process in the foreground, and let something else take care of daemonizing it if needed (described in the next answer down). That lets your server play nicely with a wider variety of init replacements and process monitors.

So if you follow this newer strategy, this option is really more of a verbosity control than anything — you no longer have to change your actual startup behavior in “daemon” mode.

[kpdyer]

Sounds good. Thanks for the tip! I'll close this issue and open another to focus on better default verbosity.