running from terminal

running from terminal

[phillc]

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hi,
i am using ubuntu (gui) and to start emacs, i open a terminal and type
emacs.
however, that then causes the terminal to stop, rendering it useless,
despite it still existing, until in cntrl - c out of it.

is there anyway to launch emacs without it being dependant upon the
terminal?

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Re: running from terminal

[Daniel Pittman]

phillc <spyyderz@gmail.com> writes:

> i am using ubuntu (gui) and to start emacs, i open a terminal and type
> emacs.  

That seem cumbersome and unnecessary.  Try starting it from a menu or
other GUI shortcut, or running it from the "run program" widget provided
by the distribution.

> however, that then causes the terminal to stop, rendering it useless,
> despite it still existing, until in cntrl - c out of it.

No, it doesn't.  The emacs process is running and connected to the
terminal, even though it isn't using that.  This is the normal, correct
and expected behaviour of running a process from the command line.[1]

> is there anyway to launch emacs without it being dependant upon the
> terminal?

Plenty.  The first set of suggestions probably help.

However, if you insist on starting the tool from a command shell inside
a terminal and detaching it manually the invocation you are looking for
would be[2]:

] emacs & disown; exit

That would start emacs in the background, remove it from the bash process
group of the shell, then exit the shell and, consequently, the graphical
terminal emulator.

HTH, HAND.
         Daniel


Footnotes: 
[1]  It has become fashionable for some GUI applications to fork
     themselves away from the controlling terminal, these days, but many
     tools still work the right ^W traditional way.

[2]  ...assuming you have the default setup of bash as a login shell,
     which seems a likely bet, or have used something similarly derived.

Re: running from terminal

[Tim X]

phillc <spyyderz@gmail.com> writes:

> hi,
> i am using ubuntu (gui) and to start emacs, i open a terminal and type emacs.
> however, that then causes the terminal to stop, rendering it useless, despite
> it still existing, until in cntrl - c out of it.
>
> is there anyway to launch emacs without it being dependant upon the terminal?
>

You ahve things slightly mixed up conceptually. When you open a
terminal, you are in fact using something like xterm, kterm,
gnome-terminal etc, that runs a shell and provides you with an interface
to that shell. 

This means that what you need to look at are the job control
capabilities of the shell you are using. 

Most shells support the concept of running a process in the
background. In most shells this is achieved by appending a '&' to the
command, which tells the shell to run the command in the background and
immediately return the foreground process (i.e. your interactive
shell). Most shells also have command for manipulating processes and
moving them into the forground and background etc. Exactly how depends
on the shell (i.e. bash, zsh, csh, tcsh etc). 

Note also that control-c as a way of quitting a program is a pretty bad
habit. and won't always have the expected result. If you have to do a
ctl-c to exit the terminal you started emacs in, then emacs must still
be running and doing this is likely to kill both emacs and the
terminal. If you exited emacs first, your terminal prompt would return
and you could use logout/exit to close the terminal. 

HTH

Tim


-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au

Re: running from terminal

[Phil Carmody]

phillc <spyyderz@gmail.com> writes:
> hi,
> i am using ubuntu (gui) and to start emacs, i open a terminal and type emacs.
> however, that then causes the terminal to stop, rendering it useless, despite
> it still existing, until in cntrl - c out of it.
>
> is there anyway to launch emacs without it being dependant upon the terminal?

Assuming you're using a shell like 'bash', then just append an 
ampersand to the command line. This is known as running it in 
the 'background'.

Emacs will then happily run independently of the terminal and 
shell. You can continue using the shell to do other things, and
can even close the terminal if you want.

Look in your shell's manpages for words like foreground, 
background, and job control.

Phil
-- 
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