I got cherrypy to run as a daemon finally.  

using the Daemonizer plugin.  
  
I heard about the plugin in a comment at  

[http://groups.google.com/group/cherrypy-users/browse_thread/thread/89e62bd4f9414acd/0f00d5d67c1d99c5?#0f00d5d67c1d99c5]

I'm using CherryPy 3.1.0 on Fedora 8 and the following seems to work well.

{{{
import cherrypy
from cherrypy.process.plugins import Daemonizer
Daemonizer(cherrypy.engine).subscribe()

class HelloWorld:
    def index(self):
        return "Hello world!"
    index.exposed = True

cherrypy.quickstart(HelloWorld(), '/',)
}}}