Hari's Technical Space

You can use one of the 5 methods explained in this hack to execute a

Linux command, or shell script in the background.

 

Method 1. Use &

You can execute a command (or shell script) as a background job by

appending an ampersand to the command as shown below.

 

$ ./my-shell-script.sh &

 

Method 2. Nohup

After you execute a command (or shell script) in the background using

&, if you logout from the session, the command will get killed. To avoid

that, you should use nohup as shown below.

 

$ nohup ./my-shell-script.sh &

 

Method 3. Screen Command

After you execute a command in the background using nohup and &, the

command will get executed even after you logout. But, you cannot

connect to the same session again to see exactly what is happening on

the screen. To do that, you should use screen command.

Linux screen command offers the ability to detach a session that is

running some process, and then attach it at a later time. When you

reattach the session later, your terminals will be there exactly in the way

you left them earlier.

 

Method 4. At Command

Using at command you can schedule a job to run at a particular date

and time. For example, to execute the backup script at 10 a.m

tomorrow, do the following.

 

$ at -f backup.sh 10 am tomorrow

 

Method 5. Watch Command

To execute a command continuously at a certain interval, use watch

command as shown below.

 

$ watch df -h