Suspend, Background, Disown
I'm currently working on a hobby project, using crawlers to download media files for a dataset. Some of these are large files that also need preprocessing. Instead of building a whole system to manage this, I'm just creating simple scripts to handle them one at a time. Given the volume of data I'm working with, I realized the scripts were going to take a long time to run on my mini-server. So, I…
Recently, while working on a hobby project involving media files, the writer encountered large files that needed preprocessing. To manage these files, the writer created simple scripts to handle them individually. As the data volume grew, the scripts began to take a long time to run on the writer's mini-server, leading to the need for background processes. Previously, the writer relied on nohup or tmux for this purpose. However, today, the writer remembered a trick they had recently learned.
To suspend a process that's already running, the writer presses CTRL + Z. After suspending the process, the writer can resume it in the background by typing bg and hitting enter. The script or command will then run in the background, confirmed by a message ending with an ampersand (&). The crucial part of this trick is disowning the process. To do this, the writer enters disown -h %1, where %1 represents the job number. By disowning the process, it becomes completely independent of the current shell session.
While nohup still serves its purpose, the writer finds this method advantageous, particularly when working on a server without tmux or permission to install it. The writer concludes that this method is particularly useful for simple tasks, especially in such server environments.
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