Restarting a Perl-script (socket daemon) from /etc/inittab

I run a small multiplayer card game with around 500 users at peak times:

The client is in Flash and the server is in Perl.

The Perl server binds to port 8080, i.e. only 1 instance of it can be started (important detail).

The Perl server poll()s TCP-sockets and forks only once – at the startup by calling this method:

sub daemonize {
    die "Can not fork: $!\n" unless defined (my $child = fork());
    # the parent should die
    exit 0 if $child;

    setsid();
    open(STDIN, '</dev/null');
    open(STDOUT, '>/tmp/pref.txt');
    open(STDERR, '>&STDOUT');
    chdir('/');
    umask(0);
}
....
$tcpSocket = IO::Socket::INET->new(Proto     => 'tcp',
                                   LocalPort => 8080,
                                   Listen    => SOMAXCONN,
                                   ReuseAddr => 1,
                                   );
die "Can not create listening TCP socket: $!\n"
        unless defined $tcpSocket;

It runs on CentOS 5.6 Linux / 64 bit, PostgreSQL 8.4.8 and Perl 5.8.8.

Because my budget is small and I had enough troubles already, I want to use as little additional software as possible – so that I can change hosters or reinstall my cheapo server quickly. That is why I for example just log to /tmp/pref.txt instead of installing syslog-ng. And that is why I'd like to use /etc/inittab for restarting my Perl daemon.

My Perl daemon runs mostly stable, but approx. once a week it can crash with a

May 29 11:06:46 myhost kernel: pref.pl[3113]: segfault at 00007fffa21e6fd8 rip 0000003cce274460 rsp 00007fffa21e6fd0 error 6

Since I'm tired of restarting the server manually, I've tried to add it to the /etc/inittab:

pref:3:respawn:/bin/su -c '/usr/local/pref/pref.pl' nobody

(and I've added a nightly cronjob to "pkill pref.pl" in the hope to refresh perl this way).

Unfortunately this does not work as expected – in the /var/log/messages I see that the script is being started again and again:

Jun  2 18:55:56 myhost init: Id "pref" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Jun  2 19:00:58 myhost init: Id "pref" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
Jun  2 19:06:02 myhost init: Id "pref" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes

What am I doing wrong here? I was hoping to being able to use /etc/inittab here, because I remember using it for a similar situation at work few years ago (also with a Perl daemon) and it worked well then…

Thank you!
Alex

UPDATE:

My game is not crashing, perl interpreter does (but not often, once a week).

My question is about how to run a Perl daemon (i.e. a Perl script that forks once in the beginning and then binds to a TCP port) from /etc/inittab?