Inconstant Behavior on SUSE Servers Using & background command

JustImagine · 12-17-2010, 11:46 AM

Have a bit of a dilemma I'm trying to track down. Have a user using both date and ps commands with & at the end of the line in a shell script. When he runs the script, it waits until he hits ENTER to get back to a prompt. Other times he doesn't. Also, I've noticed that this will sometimes happen, then immediately rerun the script and the behavior stops.

Thoughts? What controls this type of behavior?

Thanks ahead of time!

Reuti · 12-18-2010, 05:26 AM

Why using & at all, when the script is intended to wait? What you see is a race condition which can't be predicted, i.e. which subprocess will finish first will change from run to run.