Regaining output from a background process

the_holysmoke · 11-05-2003, 06:09 AM

I am running a perl script in the background that prints some progress information to the stdout ie terminal.
(cmdline: nohup perl script.pl &)

As this script takes some time to run (~3days) I will have to logout. This loses the output to the terminal.
Is there anyway to regain the output when i log back in?
I know i could pipe the output to a file, but I don't really want to do that.

Any ideas on this would be greatly appreciated.

Azmeen · 11-05-2003, 07:54 AM

type jobs to see the list of background processes...

and type fg job number to bring it to the foreground.

The job number is in square braces.

Azmeen · 11-05-2003, 07:57 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Azmeen
type jobs to see the list of background processes...

and type fg job number to bring it to the foreground.

The job number is in square braces.

Edit: Barghh... replied too fast, anyway, eventhough you mentioned that you prefer not to pipe the output into a file, but IMHO, that's the only way to do it. You could just grep the important bits of the output if you know the pattern, that might improve the signal to noise ratio of your output log.

DrHorrible · 03-11-2011, 04:27 PM

I realize this thread hasn't been touched in a long time, but it's still at the top of Google's results, so I thought I'd contribute an answer.

screen would be great. Start up the command in a screen session, detatch, and then reattach later. To see output that has scrolled past the top of the screen, go into copy mode with C-a [ (and get out with escape).

If you Google "I'm Feeling Lucky" for 'the beauty of screen' you can follow scenario 1.

chrism01 · 03-11-2011, 06:48 PM

I agree that 'screen' is the literal answer to the OP qn, but (personally) I would always log to a file just in case the process dies, gets killed, system reboots etc.