Angel's Consultant

Option 1: nohup

The best way is often the simplest.

nohup long-running-command &

It was made specifically for this, it even logs stdout to nohup.log.

man nohup

Option 2: bg + disown

ctrl+z
bg
disown -h

If you want to "background" already running tasks, then Ctrl+Z then run bg to put your most recent suspended task to background, allowing it to continue running. disown will keep the process running after you log out. The -h flag prevents hangup.

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screen and others can do it, but that's not what they're for. I recommend nohup for tasks you know you are going to leave behind and bg for tasks you're already running and don't want to re-start.

Keep in mind, both are bash specific. If you're not using bash, then the commands could be different.

#!/bin/bash

while true; do
  # Do something
  sleep 5;
done