Run script in background

**DBrocks** · July 29th, 2008

Hey guys. How can i run my SH script in the background, like a daemon. Thanks in advance!

**unutbu** · July 29th, 2008

If the script is called myscript.sh, then run

Code:

myscript.sh &

**sdennie** · July 29th, 2008

If you run it from a terminal you will also need to use disown to keep it running after you close the terminal:

Code:

my_script.sh &
disown
exit

**unutbu** · July 29th, 2008

Vor, thanks for pointing out the 'disown' command -- I didn't know about that. I've always used nohup. Is that the same?

Also, just out of curiosity, I saved this script as 'test.sh':

Code:

#!/bin/sh
while true ; do
    echo "Hi!" >> ~/test/a;
    sleep 2
done

And ran it from a gnome-terminal like this:

Code:

test.sh &

I then closed the gnome-terminal, and looked inside ~/test/a. It was still printing 'Hi!'s!

Then I logged out of my GNOME session, got to the GDM window, pressed Ctrl-Alt-F2, and logged in at a text terminal. The tesh.sh script was still printing more 'Hi!'s in ~/test/a!

Is this the effect of some configuration option I don't know about, or is this normal?

**bodhi.zazen** · July 29th, 2008

or nohup ...

Code:

nohup script.sh &

**DGortze380** · July 29th, 2008

alt+f2 if you don't want to open a terminal to do it.
add it to /etc/init.d and update init.d to run it on login

**bodhi.zazen** · July 29th, 2008

Originally Posted by unutbu

Vor, thanks for pointing out the 'disown' command -- I didn't know about that. I've always used nohup. Is that the same?

http://playingwithsid.blogspot.com/2...-commands.html

**sdennie** · July 29th, 2008

Originally Posted by unutbu

Vor, thanks for pointing out the 'disown' command -- I didn't know about that. I've always used nohup. Is that the same?

Also, just out of curiosity, I saved this script as 'test.sh':

Code:

#!/bin/sh
while true ; do
    echo "Hi!" >> ~/test/a;
    sleep 2
done

And ran it from a gnome-terminal like this:

Code:

test.sh &

I then closed the gnome-terminal, and looked inside ~/test/a. It was still printing 'Hi!'s!

Then I logged out of my GNOME session, got to the GDM window, pressed Ctrl-Alt-F2, and logged in at a text terminal. The tesh.sh script was still printing more 'Hi!'s in ~/test/a!

Is this the effect of some configuration option I don't know about, or is this normal?

It must be a configuration option. I just tried your script and it stopped printing when I closed the terminal.

**unutbu** · July 30th, 2008

Any ideas where I should look to find out why my terminal has nohup/disown always on?

I checked with pstree and found that when I run test.sh its parent starts as bash (spawned by gnome-terminal), but when gnome-terminal is closed, test.sh's parent jumps to init.

I checked my .bashrc and .profile, and nothing jumped out at me as the culprit -- though I'm not great at understanding shell stuff.

I also am researching shopt, but I'm having trouble even finding documentation on what all the options mean.