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On Ubuntu 10.04, I have a long Python program that prints a bunch of output; I run this under "nohup". However, it waits until the end to put all the text in nohup.out. When I run similar programs under FreeBSD, each line gets sent to nohup.out. Is there a Ubuntu setting I can set to get the output faster?

2 Answers 2

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Yeh, this is got to do with the way stdout is buffered by default on Linux. You need to explicitly run setbuf() in the code to override this behavior.

My suggestion is to avoid nohup, if you're using the bash shell, it allows you to disassociate the command from your shell

$ ( my_cmd > ~/output.log 2>&1 & ) 

You can also use disown for a similar effect on a currently running job.

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  • Why would you recommend avoiding nohup?
    – Warner
    Sep 13, 2010 at 14:36
  • I think because putting setbuf() in every Python script that might be nohup'd is silly. Sep 15, 2010 at 17:22
  • This works, though I'm still getting buffering. That could be because of the program (server) i'm running though-- have to look into buffering it may be doing. Jun 3, 2017 at 23:32
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Since your program is python, you can run it with python -u. Alternatively you might find the unbuffer program useful.

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