howto to run program after logging out??

Check out man nohup

this works...

nohup wget ftp://nohup.org/howto.iso & >> nohup.out

You don't need to use nohup for wget, it'll keep running when you logout AFAIK.

Or just use the mighty screen.

man screen

Better and more powerful in my opinion.

Possibly a stupid question, but ...

When he wants to run something after logging out, that process won't need interactive input. So why not use "command &" and have done?

Where is my error?

Logging out will kill that process, I think.

Why should it? Test:

• start a(ny) process in the background
• note the PID
• logout
• log in as root and have a look at the PID of your process

I just can't do it myself, I'm sitting in front of a windows box...

As a rule of thumb child processes are terminated when their parent process ends.

And to follow up with better detail, running a command with & at the end is just forking off the /bin/bash shell process when logged in, this is why it dies if you logout. Use screen or the nohup if you desire to logout before the command finishes.

Aha, thanks, learnt something new .

Many shells have a "logout" script the runs after you logout. I use these to usually clear the display.

Tcsh and Csh have /etc/csh.logout.

Zsh has /etc/zlogout

I don't know about bash/ash, and I deny the existance of ksh since it doesn't have a nice prompt.

You can also use the "at" daemon to do stuff for you whenever. I've even upgraded an Openssh server , including restart, while logged in by that Openssh server.

Ex:

# at now + 2 minutes
at>(do something)
at>(do something else)

#

# logout

2 minutes later...(stuff)

I think also the "disown" command will let you logout while the process stays in the background (for Zsh).

Interesting. Learnt again. Carry on anyone?

BTW, bash knows the "disown" too.