[Beowulf] Users abusing screen

[Ellis H. Wilson III]

On 10/21/11 12:12, Prentice Bisbal wrote:
>> If you give them an alternative that is well defined with an example
>> (not just, "Oh you can use such-and-such instead.") I can hardly believe
>> they'll be all that upset.
>>
> 
> Ellis,
> 
> Using nohup was exactly the advice I gave to one of my users yesterday.
> Not sure if he'll use it. 'man' is a very difficult program to learn,
> from what I understand.

Hahaha, I love your cynicism.  Right up my alley, however, I think in
all seriousness 'man' does fall short for many applications in terms of
examples (there are exceptions to this, but most man docs don't have
examples from my experience).  Many users just want examples of it's
use, and can derive their case faster from such than custom-creation of
a set of parameters from man.

So just take a few moments, cook up an example of 'nohup ./someapp &>
out.txt &' usage and associated ways to kill and watch it's output and
put it all into an email.  Save that email away, and when you're ready
just shoot it out to everyone.  Or if you have an internal wiki setup,
that's much, much better.  Just forward a link to some new page on it.

If you make even a half-assed effort to show you are providing a viable
alternative and a low bar to entry, you'll cut the number of people
complaining at least in half.

Best,

ellis