Using fork() in programs running under apache

[Luis Henrique Cassis Fagundes]

        Hi,
        I have a script that uses a smtp to send a message and this is causing
an overload of my server, because the execution time (that would be some
milisecs) is delayed by about 5 secs. I thought I could solve this by
forking the process, so the user would get a faster answer and the
forked process would be more light than the 7MB of apache. Does anyone
have any experience in forking processes under apache? I made some tests
and it looked ok, but I'm not so sure that this won't cause problems in
the future.
        Thanks.
        []s
        Luis