I have been trying to write a test program that will re-create the issue. So far, no luck. Everything I've done to call the external in my test programs works as expected. I've been trying to make the test programs more complex, adding in more modules, etc., but so far nothing exhibits the symptoms but the main daemon. I will continue to try and replicate.

My next plan of attack is to un-daemonize the daemon and try running it through the debugger.