"Shawn T. Rutledge" wrote: > > If a program calls a shell script, how can the shell script execute another > shell script in the background, in such a way that the second script will > keep executing after the first one exits? I tried just appending an > ampersand, but it seems like the second script is being killed as soon > as the first one exits. I thought maybe exec does this, but the bash > man page says that "exec command" causes the command to replace the > shell as the current process, rather than to start a new process. I > need it to actually fork instead. > > The context is that I'm trying to get vgetty to convert the .rmd files > (some weird sound format) into .wav files as it receives them, but that > causes vgetty to block until this conversion process is done, and it > can't answer the phone again until it's done. The conversion should be > a background process. Weird - I havent had the second one die when the first one exits, but your calling the script from other than the usual means. I believe the answer to your problem may lie in the nohup command, as your process is really dying not because the script exits, but because its I/O pipe vanishes when the calling script exits. -- jkenner @ mindspring . com__ I Support Linux: _> _ _ |_ _ _ _| Working Together To <__(_||_)| )| `(_|(_)(_| To Build A Better Future. |