Re: Starting daemon using ssh

On Tue, Nov 02, 2004 at 08:19:39AM +0100, Binninger, Martin wrote:
> While trying, to start a daemon on a remote machine using ssh, the client
> doesn't return to the local prompt after performing the start-up of the
> daemon.

This question seems to come up at least once a month.

imadev:~$ time ssh localhost 'sleep 20 &'
wooledg@localhost's password: 

real    0m22.757s
user    0m0.080s
sys     0m0.020s

imadev:~$ time ssh localhost 'sleep 20 >/dev/null 2>&1 &'
wooledg@localhost's password: 

real    0m2.298s
user    0m0.080s
sys     0m0.020s
imadev:~$ ps -ef | grep sleep
 wooledg 26650 11055  0 07:49:21 pts/1     0:00 grep sleep
 wooledg 26648     1  0 07:49:17 ?         0:00 sleep 20


Any more questions?

Fix your daemon-starting scripts.  Don't leave file descriptors
hanging.  Redirect everything to a logfile.  In Bourne shell syntax,
you can do that like this:

#!/bin/sh

PATH=....
export PATH

exec >>/var/log/whatever 2>&1

case "$1" in
    start) .... ;;
    stop)  .... ;;
    ....
esac