Re^5: Long Process Waits Until End to Display Results

So the lengthy process is buffering when writing to the output file? If so, it sounds like the program you're executing is doing the buffering, and I quote sgifford:

If that's the case, finding an option to cause the program to display output immediately is the easiest solution; the other option is to connect it to a pseudo-tty, with something like Expect.

Comment on Re^5: Long Process Waits Until End to Display Results

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Re^6: Long Process Waits Until End to Display Results by tilly (Archbishop) on Dec 08, 2004 at 01:24 UTC
It is possible that he did not properly background the forked-off process, and therefore Apache was waiting for all possible output to come back before sending anything. (Apache needs that to be able to include the size of the response in the return headers that it sends to the browser.) The fun with buffering is that there are many processes involved, and if any one of them buffers, you won't get your output.	[reply]
Re^7: Long Process Waits Until End to Display Results by C_T (Scribe) on Dec 09, 2004 at 19:12 UTC
It is possible that he did not properly background the forked-off process, What should I be doing to make sure the process is properly backgrounded? CT Charles Thomas Madison, WI	[reply]
Re^8: Long Process Waits Until End to Display Results by tilly (Archbishop) on Dec 09, 2004 at 22:08 UTC
Close all file descriptors. That either means calling close on STDIN, STDOUT and STDERR (or opening them to files) or else launching a new process with all of those redirected. You could have found that at this FAQ entry.	[reply]