Re: [Help-bash] backgrounding a process sends it into a tailspin

[Cook, Rich]

On Sep 12, 2012, at 2:28 PM, Cook, Rich wrote:

> 
> On Sep 12, 2012, at 2:07 PM, Chet Ramey wrote:
> 
>> On 9/12/12 5:00 PM, Cook, Rich wrote:
>> 
>>> I think that starts putting me in the woods.  gnuplot needs stdin or it is 
>>> kind of useless to us
>> 
>> Well, then why worry about the problem of putting it in the background
>> anyway?  You can't read from stdin in the background.  If you just say
>> it won't work in the background, and attempting to start it in the
>> background is user error because it needs stdin, we're not having this
>> conversation.
> 
> There are multiple users and use cases.  Some users want to put it into the 
> background and then bring it back, which works fine if it's not called 
> through a wrapper script.  But even those that put it into the background 
> want it to come back and read from stdin. 

I should clarify, nobody is starting it in the background.  What happens, is 
that we have a few users that spawn multiple instances and then put it into the 
background at some point and start another instance, work on that, then 
foreground the other, work on that, etc.  That's just their workflow.  This 
works fine for them if there is no wrapper script, but with a script, they are 
blocked.  I think it's reasonable for them to question why this is.  And it's 
reasonable for me to not solve the problem, but I'm very curious to try to get 
it right as it seems like there might be a way. 

Thanks for all the ideas you're giving, it's very instructive. 

-- 
✐Richard Cook   
✇ Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
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---
Information Management & Graphics Grp., Services & Development Div., Integrated 
Computing & Communications Dept.
(opinions expressed herein are mine and not those of LLNL)