Running a program with multiple sessions
 

I'm currently using PuTTY to connect to my Slack 9.1 box via my laptop (same LAN). I'm wondering if there's any way I can run a program (say, SETI@Home or whatnot) and not have to have PuTTY maintain a connection; ie I can log in at a later time (remotely) and either check up on the status of the program or end it or whatnot.

Any suggestions? TIA
-- Poetics

Look up the man or info page for nohup. This command will run a program in the background, put stderr streams into a file (nohup.out) and allow you to logout. nohup stand for no HUP.

Thanks -- I'll try that this evening

Okay, I've started my process with nohup (requiring root), and logged out. Logged back in and I can't find the process to kill (making sure I could, should I want the process killed). "fg" doesn't work (tells me there's nothing in the background), and the output of "ps -aux" is pretty standard, with no mention of the program I started.

Ideas?

look at "screen" it basically runs a virtual console you can connect and disconenct from at will.... like vnc for consoles.... ish.

You will need to su to root after logging in again. Then if you ps aux | grep <program name> you should be able to find it. Maybe the process aborted at some point before you logged back in.