Bash: Put a job in the background and then tail the log

Question

How do you make the escaping work so that the & is actually running the first command in the background?

# foo param1 param2 >> run.out &; tail -f run.out

score 16 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 05 '09 at 23:37

16

Just drop the semicolon:

# foo param1 param2 >> run.out & tail -f run.out

answered Oct 05 '09 at 23:37

katriel

7

It helps to think of the ampersand as a *variant* of the semicolon, which it is, really. – Teddy Oct 07 '09 at 04:52

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Oct 06 '09 at 01:40

1

You need to put the backgrounded command in ()'s.

(ls -R / >>/tmp/list & ); tail -f /tmp/list

Sadly, this really backgrounds it. You won't be able to us %1 to get to its PID.

answered Oct 06 '09 at 01:40

TomOnTime

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Jan 30 '12 at 05:19

0

I just ran into this question as well, and solved it this way:

`foo param1 param2 >> run.out &` ; tail -f run.out

I don't know if the semantics are different.

For this specific case, the following is also useful:

foo param1 param2 | tee -a run.out

answered Jan 30 '12 at 05:19

Steve Bennett

score 0 · Answer 4 · answered Oct 06 '09 at 01:00

0

You could use nohup:

nohup cmd & 

tail -f nohup.out

answered Oct 06 '09 at 01:00

Stephan

4 Answers4