1) It is strange that zabbix-server dies as soon as it looses connection to DB. It must keep trying to reconnect, not die with error.
2) Main zabbix-server (and zabbix-agentd too) process put itself into the background. This behaviour must be controlled by option, whether to go into background or not. For the case of foreground running process can log into stdout. Need of zabbix daemons running in foreground is very simple - they may be monitored nicely using daemontools (http://cr.yp.to) or in some other way. Theese processes MUST be monirored because of 1) for example.
2) Main zabbix-server (and zabbix-agentd too) process put itself into the background. This behaviour must be controlled by option, whether to go into background or not. For the case of foreground running process can log into stdout. Need of zabbix daemons running in foreground is very simple - they may be monitored nicely using daemontools (http://cr.yp.to) or in some other way. Theese processes MUST be monirored because of 1) for example.