Exit zsh, but leave running jobs open?

Bash Problem Overview

Just switched from bash to zsh.

In bash, background tasks continue running when the shell exits. For example here, dolphin continues running after the exit:

$ dolphin .
^Z
[1]+  Stopped                 dolphin .
$ bg
[1]+ dolphin . &
$ exit

This is what I want as the default behavior.

In contrast, zsh's behavior is to warn about running jobs on exit, then close them if you exit again. For example here, dolphin is closed when the second exit-command actually exits the shell:

 % dolphin .
^Z
zsh: suspended  dolphin .
 % bg
[1]  + continued  dolphin .
 % exit
zsh: you have running jobs.
 % exit

How do I make zsh's default behavior here like bash's?

Bash Solutions

Solution 1 - Bash

Start the program with &!:

dolphin &!

The &! (or equivalently, &|) is a zsh-specific shortcut to both background and disown the process, such that exiting the shell will leave it running.

Solution 2 - Bash

From the zsh documentation:

>HUP > >... In zsh, if you have a background job running when the shell exits, the shell will assume you want that to be killed; in this case it is sent a particular signal called SIGHUP... If you often start jobs that should go on even when the shell has exited, then you can set the option NO_HUP, and background jobs will be left alone.

So just set the NO_HUP option:

% setopt NO_HUP

Solution 3 - Bash

I have found that using a combination of nohup, &, and disown works for me, as I don't want to permanently cause jobs to run when the shell has exited.

nohup <command> & disown

While just & has worked for me in bash, I found when using only nohup, &, or disown on running commands, like a script that calls a java run command, the process would still stop when the shell is exited.

nohup makes the command ignore NOHUP and SIGHUP signals from the shell
& makes the process run in the background in a subterminal
disown followed by an argument (the index of the job number in your jobs list) prevents the shell from sending a SIGHUP signal to child processes. Using disown without an argument causes it to default to the most recent job.

I found the nohup and disown information at this page, and the & information in this SO answer.

Solution 4 - Bash

I typically use screen for keeping background jobs running.

1) Create a screen session:

screen -S myScreenName

2) Launch your scripts,services,daemons or whatever

3) Exit (detach) screen-session with

screen -d

or shortcut ALT+A then d

After few hundreds of years - if you want to resume your session (reattach):

screen -r myScreenName

If you want to know if there's a screen-session, its name and its status (attached or detached):

screen -ls

This solution works on all terminal interpreters like bash, zsh etc. See also man screen

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Owen_AR	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Bash	Anko	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Bash	Carl Norum	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Bash	ryanjdillon	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Bash	Aydin K.	View Answer on Stackoverflow