bash && operator prevents backgrounding over ssh

Question

After trying to figure out why a Capistrano task (which tried to start a daemon in the background) was hanging, I discovered that using && in bash over ssh prevents a subsequent program from running in the background. I tried it on bash 4.1.5 and 4.2.20.

The following will hang (i.e. wait for sleep to finish) in bash:

ssh localhost "cd /tmp && nohup sleep 10 >/dev/null 2>&1 &"

The following won't:

ssh localhost "cd /tmp ; nohup sleep 10 >/dev/null 2>&1 &"

Neither will this:

cd /tmp && nohup sleep 10 >/dev/null 2>&1 &

Both zsh and dash will execute it in the background in all cases, regardless of && and ssh. Is this normal/expected behavior for bash, or a bug?

Answer 1

One easy solution is to use:

ssh localhost "(cd /tmp && nohup sleep 10) >/dev/null 2>&1 &"

(this also works if you use braces, see second example below).

I did not experiment further but I am reasonably convinced it has to do with open file descriptors hanging around. Perhaps zsh and dash bind the && so that this means what has to be spelled as:

{ cd /tmp && nohup sleep 10; } >/dev/null 2>&1

in bash.

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Nope, quick experiment in dash shows that echo foo && echo bar >file only redirects the latter. Still, it has to have something to do with lingering open fd's causing ssh to wait for more output; I've run into this a lot in the past.

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One more trick, not needed if you use the parentheses or braces for this particular case but might be useful in a more general context, where the set of commands to do with && are more complex. Since bash seems to be hanging on to the file descriptor inappropriately with && but not with ;, you can turn a && b && c into a || exit 1; b || exit 1; c. This works with the test case:

ssh localhost "true || exit 1; echo going on; nohup sleep 10 >/dev/null 2>&1 &"

Replace true with false and the echo of "going on" is omitted.

(You can also set -e, although sometimes that is a bigger hammer than desired.)