Linux: using the tee command via ssh

Question

I have written a Fortran program (let's call it program.exe) with does some simulation for me. Via ssh I'm logging ino some far away computers to start runs there whose results I collect after a few days. To be up-to-date how the program proceeds I want to write the shell output into a text file output.txt also (since I can't be logged in the far away computers all the time). The command should be something like

nohup program.exe | tee output.txt > /dev/null &

This enables me to have a look at output.txt to see the current status even though the program hasn't ended its run yet. The above command works fine on my local machine. I tried first with the command '>' but here the problem was that nothing was written into the text file until the whole program had finish (maybe related to the pipe buffer?). So I used the workaround with 'tee'.

The problem is now that when I log into the computer via ssh (ssh -X user@machine), execute the above command and look at output.txt with the VI editor nothing appears until the program has finished. If I omit the 'nohup' and '&' I will not even get any shell output until it has finished. My thought was that it might have to do something with data being buffered by ssh but I'm rather a Linux newbie. For any ideas or workaround I would be very grateful!

Answer 1

I would use screen utility http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd/cmd.csp?path=s/screen instead of nohup . Thus I would be able to set my program to detached state (^A^D) reconnect to the host, retrieve my screen session (screen -r) and monitor my output as if I never logged out.