That sounds strangely like the problem systemd was created to solve. It's supposed to detect double forks in the started daemon and track pid files named in it'

That sounds strangely like the problem systemd was created to solve. It's supposed to detect double forks in the started daemon and track pid files named in it's configuration file. At least that's how I read it in numerous articles on LWN and mailing lists, I haven't tried it on an actual system yet.