Starting a Thread when Nginx starts

[sahyagiri]

Hi, 
I am new to Nginx. Have gone through evanmiller blog and  nginxguts to
write my own module. Wrote a hello module which is working fine. 
 I extended the hello module and in the http handler, it could start the
thread. I have used pthread library for this. Now I want to start a
thread of my own along with nginx and not with a http handler.

1. What modification is required to make it?
2. How to stop the thread when nginx is exiting?
3. Is there a different way of doing it other than pthread for a
background activity.

Posted at Nginx Forum: http://forum.nginx.org/read.php?2,213156,213156#msg-213156