Thanks for this info. you are saying processes will terminate if trying to write to stdout, but would otherwise stay alive if signals were set to be ignored, correct? > > An example of this that I use is a backgrounded ssh port forward: "ssh -L > 1234:target.host:22 -N pivot.host &" > I've had these last though complete logouts, which I like, until I really > want it to terminate and need to run netstat -lnp to find it again. > The last part, about finding them and terminating them, you are looking for the PID that is attached to the socket. I think for your purpose this would work best: 'ps axu | grep ssh | grep 1234' But I see your point. As a side note, I have not had much luck with non-executing ssh tunnels (-N) staying alive in most cases. I should also say, I am mostly using reverse tunnels (-R).