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linuxsudonohup

Getting sudo and nohup to work together

Linux newbie here.

I have a perl script which takes two command line inputs. I tried to run it in the background but this is what I got:

[~user]$ nohup sudo ./ascii_loader_script.pl 20070502 ctm_20070502.csv &
[2] 19603
[~user]$ nohup: appending output to `nohup.out'

after the system returns "nohup: appending output to `nohup.out'", no new prompt will appear. Then as long as I type in some other command, the shell will tell me that the process is stopped:

[~user]$ nohup sudo ./ascii_loader_script.pl 20070502 ctm_20070502.csv &
[2] 19603
[~user]$ nohup: appending output to `nohup.out'
ls
ascii_loader_script.pl  format_wrds_trd.txt  nohup.out  norm_wrds_trd.cfg
[2]+  Stopped                 nohup sudo ./ascii_loader_script.pl 20070502 ctm_20070502.csv

I've looked at this post and tried to do "sudo date" before executing the command. Still got the same thing. http://www.sudo.ws/pipermail/sudo-users/2003-July/001648.html

Solution

  • The problem here, imho, is not nohup, but background processing sudo.

    You are putting the process in background (& at end of command) but probably sudo needs password authentication, and that is why the process stops.

    Try one of these:

    1) remove the ampersand from end of command, reply to passord prompt and afterwords put it in background (by typing CTRL-Z - which stops the process and issuing the bg command to send it to background)

    2) Change the /etc/sudoers to not ask for users password by including the line: myusername ALL=(ALL) NOPASSWD: ALL

    If besides the password reply your application waits for other input, then you can pipe the input to the command like this: $ cat responses.txt|sudo mycommand.php

    hth