In Linux, there are several ways to keep a long running process running in the background. Here are a few common methods:
- Using & to run the command in the background:
You can run a command in the background by appending an ampersand (&) to the end of the command. For example, to run a process called myprogram in the background, you can use the following command:
myprogram &
This will start the process and immediately return control to the terminal, allowing you to continue using the command line.
- Using nohup to prevent the process from being terminated:
If you want to ensure that the process continues running even if you log out of the terminal or close the terminal window, you can use the nohup command. For example, to run a process called myprogram with nohup, you can use the following command:
nohup myprogram &
This will start the process in the background and redirect its output to a file called nohup.out in the current directory. You can safely log out of the terminal or close the terminal window without stopping the process.
- Using screen to detach the process from the terminal:
If you want to start a long running process that requires user interaction (such as a text editor), and you want to detach the process from the terminal so you can log out and log back in later, you can use the screen command. Here’s how:
- Start a new screen session:
screen
- Run the long running process in the new screen session.
- Detach the screen session by pressing Ctrl+a followed by d.
- Log out of the terminal or close the terminal window.
- Log back in to the terminal and reattach the screen session:
screen -r
This will bring you back to the screen session where you started the long running process.