Scripts with nohup inside don't exit correctly

Question

We have script which do some processing and triggers a job in background using nohup. When we schedule this script from Oracle OEM (or it can be any scheduler job), i see the following error and show status as failed but the script actually finished without issue. How to exit the script correctly when backup ground job is started with nohup?

Remote operation finished but process did not close its stdout/stderr

file: test.sh

#!/bin/bash
# do some processing
...
nohup ./start.sh 2000 &

# end of the script

Solution

By executing start.sh in this manner you are allowing it to claim partial ownership of test.sh's output file descriptors (stdout/stderr). So whereas when most bash scripts exit, their file descriptors are closed for them (by the operating system), test.sh's file descriptors cannot be closed because start.sh still has a claim to them.

The solution is to not let start.sh claim the same output file descriptors as test.sh is using. If you don't care about its output, you can launch it like this:

nohup ./start.sh 2000 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null &

which tells the new process to send both its stdout and stderr to /dev/null. If you do care about its output, then just capture it somewhere more meaningful:

nohup ./start.sh 2000 1>/path/to/stdout.txt 2>/path/to/stderr.txt &

Comments

[user1595858]

I tried it but still the same error after completion of the job.#Startup MMLE services, $ADMIN_SCRIPTS_HOME/wmlke.sh start 10218 $ADMIN_SCRIPTS_HOME/wmlke.sh start 10220 $ADMIN_SCRIPTS_HOME/wmlke.sh start 10222 nohup $ADMIN_SCRIPTS_HOME/wmlke.sh start_dispatcher 10809 1>/dev/null 2>/dev/null &

[dg99]

You accepted my answer. Does that mean that it ended up working for you? Or are you still having issues?

[user1595858]

Works now after adding output file descriptors to other commands as well.

[KullDox]

worked for me. thanks. spent like a whole day trying to find out why the script I'm executing remotely hangs.