Continue running a task with terminal disconnected?

Question

Say I'm running a task on a remote (Ubuntu) server which last hours, but I need to disconnect my shell client now. Foolishly, I didn't use screen or think of starting the task with nohup.

Is there a way to perhaps pause the task, then start it up in the background so it will continue even with my terminal disconnected?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Jun 07 '12 at 08:30

3

If you're not interested in the output, you can use Ctrl-Z and then bg to run the task in the background, and then disown to stop the shell sending it a SIGHUP when you disconnect.

answered Jun 07 '12 at 08:30

nickgrim

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Awesome. I didn't know about `disown`. Weirdly it doesn't have a man page or any help. – Steve Bennett Jun 07 '12 at 08:46
And out of curiosity - if I am interested in the output? – Steve Bennett Jun 07 '12 at 08:46
On RHEL `man disown` opens `BASH_BUILTINS(1)` which has a bit more information. – Bram Jun 07 '12 at 09:56
If you *are* interested in output, you could start `screen` and use something like [reptyr](https://github.com/nelhage/reptyr) to reparent it. – nickgrim Jun 10 '12 at 21:09
This explains it more: http://www.serverwatch.com/tutorials/article.php/3935306/Detach-Processes-With-Disown-and-Nohup.htm – Steve Bennett Sep 04 '13 at 03:01

Continue running a task with terminal disconnected?

1 Answers1