Linux Processes – Do Background Processes Get SIGHUP on Logout?

bashlinuxprocesssignals

This is a followup to this question.

I've run some more tests; looks like it really doesn't matter if this is done at the physical console or via SSH, neither does this happen only with SCP; I also tested it with cat /dev/zero > /dev/null. The behaviour is exactly the same:

  • Start a process in the background using & (or put it in background after it's started using CTRL-Z and bg); this is done without using nohup.
  • Log off.
  • Log on again.
  • The process is still there, running happily, and is now a direct child of init.

I can confirm both SCP and CAT quits immediately if sent a SIGHUP; I tested this using kill -HUP.

So, it really looks like SIGHUP is not sent upon logoff, at least to background processes (can't test with a foreground one for obvious reasons).

This happened to me initially with the service console of VMware ESX 3.5 (which is based on RedHat), but I was able to replicate it exactly on CentOS 5.4.

The question is, again: shouldn't a SIGHUP be sent to processes, even if they're running in background, upon logging off? Why is this not happening?

Edit

I checked with strace, as per Kyle's answer.
As I was expecting, the process doesn't get any signal when logging off from the shell where it was launched. This happens both when using the server's console and via SSH.

Best Answer

Answer found.

For BASH, this depends on the huponexit shell option, which can be viewed and/or set using the built-in shopt command.

Looks like this options is off by default, at least on RedHat-based systems.

More info on the BASH man page:

The shell exits by default upon receipt of a SIGHUP. Before exiting, an interactive shell resends the SIGHUP to all jobs, running or stopped. Stopped jobs are sent SIGCONT to ensure that they receive the SIGHUP. To prevent the shell from sending the signal to a particular job, it should be removed from the jobs table with the disown builtin (see SHELL BUILTIN COMMANDS below) or marked to not receive SIGHUP using disown -h.

If the huponexit shell option has been set with shopt, bash sends a SIGHUP to all jobs when an interactive login shell exits.

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