Shell – Running multiple nohup commands in background

Add the -b flag to sudo, which prompts for password if needed and then goes to the background. (The redirect also needs to be done within bash) (Curly brackets are needed to get the redirection to apply to everything)

ssh -t esolve@remote_host 'sudo -b nohup bash -c "{ ls;sleep 100;echo finish; } < /dev/null 2>&1 >> ssh.log"'

You might also want to try screen instead...

ssh -t esolve@remote_host 'sudo -b screen -m -d bash -c "{ ls;sleep 100;echo finish; } < /dev/null 2>&1 >> ssh.log"'

The commands within each group run in parallel, and the groups run sequentially, each group of parallel commands waiting for the previous group to finish before starting execution.

The following is a working example:

Assume 3 groups of commands as in the code below. In each group the three commands are started in the background with &.

The 3 commands will be started almost at the same time and run in parallel while the script waits for them to finish.

After all three commands in the the third group exit, command 10 will execute.

$ cat command_groups.sh 
#!/bin/sh

command() {
    echo $1 start
    sleep $(( $1 & 03 ))      # keep the seconds value within 0-3
    echo $1 complete
}

echo First Group:
command 1 &
command 2 &
command 3 &
wait

echo Second Group:
command 4 &
command 5 &
command 6 &
wait

echo Third Group:
command 7 &
command 8 &
command 9 &
wait

echo Not really a group, no need for background/wait:
command 10

$ sh command_groups.sh 
First Group:
1 start
2 start
3 start
1 complete
2 complete
3 complete
Second Group:
4 start
5 start
6 start
4 complete
5 complete
6 complete
Third Group:
7 start
8 start
9 start
8 complete
9 complete
7 complete
Not really a group, no need for background/wait:
10 start
10 complete
$