[plug] Crontab??

[Michael Holland]

On Wed, 28 Jul 2004, Denis Brown wrote:

> The & at the end of a command line causes the command, once initiated, to
> be sent "to the background" for continued execution.   The means, for
> example, that you can start a long job, then log off without the job
> stopping (because you logged off.)

Actually, when you log off, the background process should get a HUP
(hangup) signal, and exit. Otherwise its running while the controlling
terminal, and probably stdout etc, have gone away or maybe are being used
by someone else. Someone who, 3 days later, wonders why 10 million
apparently random digits are apearing on their (virtual) terminal.

> Thus you might have an hypothetical job "calculate pi to 10,000,000
> decimal places" that will probably take quite some time to complete.   If

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