many tails

[Cameron Simpson]

On 05Dec2006 19:47, Andy Green <andy at warmcat.com> wrote:
| Mike - EMAIL IGNORED wrote:
| >On FC4 with KDE, I ran ps -ef and noticed that there
| >were many old /usr/bin/tail processes.  They all
| >looked like tail -f that I had run.[...]
| >but if I close a KDE window on a
| >tail -f without ctrl.c, the processes persists.
| >
| >Is this the way it should be?
| 
| I believe so... if the tail did not subsequently try to show any more 
| output.  Only when it tries to issue more output to the now gone-away 
| terminal session would it get a signal that would end up killing it.

Um, I'm not so sure.

A foreground tail -f should get a SIGHUP and quit. A background one may
behave as you describe, being in a different process group.

Mike: were your "tail -f"s foreground or background?
-- 
Cameron Simpson <cs at zip.com.au> DoD#743
http://www.cskk.ezoshosting.com/cs/

Here was a man who not only had a ready mind and a quick wit,
but could also sing.    - _Rope_