Background processes on logout

[Doug Walker]

In <1991Feb20.211507.28547 at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu> phil at ux1.cso.uiuc.edu (Phil Howard KA9WGN) writes:

>F66204 at BARILVM.BITNET (Shaul Wallach) writes:

>>   Please excuse this beginner's question. Is there any way for a
>>user to log out of a UNIX system (say AIX/6000) while leaving
>>background processes active? My experience seems to be that the
>>logout command kills all background processes, something I want
>>to prevent.

The most reliable method we have found is to submit the program as a job
through at/batch.  Then, you can logout with no impact on the ultimate
completion of the job.  For example, let's say you have a program myprog that
is designed to operate in the background.  Then, the following line will
submit the program to at to run whenever the system resources are available:

     myprog | batch

One caveat is that you would have to have permission to use the at facility.
We have chosen to permit all users to use at by having a file
/usr/lib/cron/at.deny with zero length and have removed the file
/usr/lib/cron/at.allow.  Do a man on at to get the particulars for your
system.

Hope this helps.
-- 
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Doug Walker               uunet!fdls!dougw  -or-  dougw at fdls.odag.or.gov
Oregon Department of Agriculture, Salem, Oregon           (503) 378-3790