Execute Command with xterm and close

Question

Im trying to execute a program with xterm and then close xterm with program running but it seems this doesn't work like I would expect it.

In bash there is the option bash -c [command] is there something in xterm too? Currently im using xterm -e [command] but this keeps the xterm window open till' my program has finished. But I want to open it, run the program, close it and keep the program running.

Why i want have a program startet through xterm when im not even using it? Im calling this through xpra on another computer but its not possible to only launch the program because i need it with the environment on the other pc.

Is there a way to do it?

Answer 1

I don't think You need xpra. ssh is a good choice

ssh user@hostname /path/to/program

or ssh + screen

ssh user@hostname "screen /path/to/program"

or xpra + screen

xpra user@hostname "screen /path/to/program"

Answer 2

You seem to be confused about how things work. You don't need a terminal to run a program.

"Start xterm so you can start a process and then exit xterm" reduces to "start a process" and you can factor out xterm entirely.

I'm guessing you are looking for

nohup command >command.out 2>command.err &

which starts command as a background process (because of the &) with output going to command.out and error messages to command.err.

If you don't care about output or the signal handling with nohup, you might simply just want

command &

This doesn't allow you to interact with the background command (but neither does closing the xterm so I guess you don't need that); if you want to be able to do that, consider screen or tmux which lets you run the program in a virtual terminal you can disconnect from and reconnect to later.