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First, the question: How can I warn the user that a script is running when the user clicks the close button and the terminal itself (and the process running in it) was started from the command line.

I have a script that performs actions that the user will want to reverse before the script terminates. There is a read statement that pauses the process until the user hits [enter]. But, a hapless user will occasionally click the close button [x] in the top right-hand corner. I have not found a trap that catches the close button, but a warning will do. The gnome-terminal provides the needed warning.

But, when the gnome-terminal is launched from a script (say a Thunar custom action) the feature does not work. To clarify, consider the script:

gnome-terminal --command="sh readx.sh"

Where readx.sh contains a single line: read x

On clicking the top right [x] button, a terminal launched this way closes without warning while the script is still active.

Any method for trapping or warning will work for me.

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  • Try running gnome-terminal -e "bash -c readx.sh;bash"
    – kirill-a
    Jan 6, 2015 at 10:09
  • That's close. The command will open the gnome terminal in warning mode. As written, the gnome terminal opens and then stumbles on the command readx.sh: bash: readx.sh: command not found.
    – markb
    Jan 6, 2015 at 20:43
  • May be add ./ before filename: gnome-terminal -e "bash -c ./readx.sh;bash" (if you're running it from current directory)
    – kirill-a
    Jan 6, 2015 at 21:30
  • Yup. Been there, done that, even dropped in the entire filespec. Also tried as both an sh script and a bash script.
    – markb
    Jan 7, 2015 at 0:56
  • How about `gnome-terminal -x bash -c "./readx.sh;bash"
    – kirill-a
    Jan 7, 2015 at 8:05

2 Answers 2

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Yes! Including a zenity prompt works well for me. When the script is executed with nohup and a zenity prompt is included, the thread will block as desired.

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You can actually detach you process of running readx.sh from terminal window, so even if you close the gnome-terminal window, it will continue to run in background and complete what it should do. In order to do this, you should use nohup command - it disconnects the process from the terminal, redirects its output to nohup.out and shields it from SIGHUP.

I tested it with the following command: gnome-terminal -e "nohup bash ./123.sh" Script 123.sh contains only sleep 7 && ls -a > 1.txt. So, when I run the previous command and close the window of gnome-terminal, file 1.txt is created nevertheless.

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  • This answer applies to a script that can complete its task autonomously. The readx script requires user input from an interactive terminal. Like the readx script, the actual thunar custom action requires the following interaction:"please press enter to gracefully close your encrypted volume when you are through working with it." But your answer does provide an idea that may work: detach a script that blocks at a zenity dialogue. I'll give this a try... a zenity dialogue is probably less likely to be occidentally closed in an un-trappable way.
    – markb
    Jan 8, 2015 at 13:41

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