Background processes prevent terminal window from closing

Background processes prevent terminal window from closing

[Ryan Dortmans]

Hi,

I have found that background processes prevent the terminal window
from closing. I have tried with the cmd terminal as well as mintty.
Here is a simple example:

$ notepad .profile &
[1] 10260
$ exit
logout

The window remains until I close the notepad window. I have also
reproduced the issue using a simple looping shell script instead of a
windows program.

I thought that running disown would detach the process to turn it into
a daemon, but this has no effect.

Is there any way to detach running background processes such that the
terminal can be closed?

Cheers,

Ryan Dortmans

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Re: Background processes prevent terminal window from closing

[Andy Koppe]

On 5 May 2011 05:30, Ryan Dortmans wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I have found that background processes prevent the terminal window
> from closing. I have tried with the cmd terminal as well as mintty.
> Here is a simple example:
>
> $ notepad .profile &
> [1] 10260
> $ exit
> logout
>
> The window remains until I close the notepad window. I have also
> reproduced the issue using a simple looping shell script instead of a
> windows program.
>
> I thought that running disown would detach the process to turn it into
> a daemon, but this has no effect.

No, this just removes it from the shell's job control, but it still
remains connected to the terminal session.

> Is there any way to detach running background processes such that the
> terminal can be closed?

You can start a program in a separate session using the 'setsid'
utility from the util-linux package. I don't know whether it's
possible to detach a running process.

You can close the terminal anyway though using the Close button (or
Alt+F4 in the case of mintty), except of course that the background
process might also be closed, depending on its SIGHUP handling.

Andy

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RE: Background processes prevent terminal window from closing

[Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E]]

Ryan Dortmans sent the following at Thursday, May 05, 2011 12:30 AM
>I have found that background processes prevent the terminal window from
>closing. I have tried with the cmd terminal as well as mintty. Here is a
>simple example:
>
>$ notepad .profile &
>[1]
>10260
>$ exit
>logout
>
>The window remains until I close the notepad window. I have also
>reproduced the issue using a simple looping shell script instead of a
>windows program.
>
>I thought that running disown would detach the process to turn it into a
>daemon, but this has no effect.
>
>Is there any way to detach running background processes such that the
>terminal can be closed?

Why not use cygstart to launch it already "detached"?

You might create the following alias in your profile or .bashrc.

alias notepad="cygstart '$(cygpath -u -W)/notepad.exe'"

But if you do not want to be limited file in the current working
directory, use a function.

notepad ()
{
    cygstart "$(cygpath -u -W)/notepad.exe" "$(cygpath -w "$1")"
}

You might have to change -W to -S in the first cygpath, if notepad.exe
is in $SYSDIR but not WINDIR.  (In my instance of XP, it is in both.)

Best wishes,

- Barry
  Disclaimer: Statements made herein are not made on behalf of NIAID.



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Re: Background processes prevent terminal window from closing

[Charles Wilson]

On 5/5/2011 7:38 AM, Buchbinder, Barry (NIH/NIAID) [E] wrote:
> But if you do not want to be limited file in the current working
> directory, use a function.
> 
> notepad ()
> {
>     cygstart "$(cygpath -u -W)/notepad.exe" "$(cygpath -w "$1")"
> }
> 
> You might have to change -W to -S in the first cygpath, if notepad.exe
> is in $SYSDIR but not WINDIR.  (In my instance of XP, it is in both.)

the latest (1.4.6) version of cygstart should allow the following to work:

notepad ()
{
    cygstart notepad.exe "$(cygpath -w "$1")"
}

--
Chuck

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