Unix will background running process stopped after disconnect the session

Question

Say if I run some command in background:

./my_script.sh > /dev/null &

and I close putty immediately (which is equivalent to disconnect current session right?).

Will the background process finish? Please advise, thanks.

Answer 1

When you exit an interactive bash login shell, it sends a SIGHUP to all children unless the shell option huponexit is set to off.

When most userland processes receive a SIGHUP, they will exit.

You can also prefix the command with nohup to make it ignore the SIGHUP. Moreover, you can disown it using an internal bash function.

Answer 2

If you want backgrounded tasks to persist, look into using screen

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_Screen
• http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/manual/

To create or reconnect to a screen session called 'myprocess' which will persist across sessions:

• screen -DR myprocess

To list all screens:

• screen -ls

Answer 3

Yes it should. Apparently my answer was too short.