How can you lock computer while using curl to download files?

Question

I’m using a Python script in the Terminal in Mac OS X 10.10.2 to download many files from a webpage using curl. However sometimes I might want to lock my computer and walk away but this terminates my connection. Is it possible to keep the download going in the background while locking the computer?

Answer 1

You can use nohup in conjunction with & like this:

nohup [your Python script or any command] &

The magic of nohup is that it allows a process to run even if your connection to the machine is gone. Meaning you logged out or are even disconnected. The & at the end means the process should run as a background process.

So when you enter that command the combo of nohup and & assures you that after you logout the process will still be running on the server.