re-attaching a terminal to a disconnected process

[pygmy@eskimo.com (Frank Sergeant)]

I'm thinking about a setup like this: our application would
run on a Linux box at the central office, one instance (process)
for each user.  Some users would be connected over the central
office's ethernet.  Other users would be at remote offices
connected perhaps directly over a modem to the central office's
Linux box.  The remote machines might be running Linux or just
a terminal program.

What happens to the remote user's process on the central Linux
box if the connection between the remote machine and
the central office's Linux box is broken?  This could happen
by a telephone line glitch or someone turning off the remote
machine or power failure, etc.  I suppose the process would
be killed, right?

Is there a way to tell the process to keep running even if
its terminal is disconnected, and then later re-attach a
terminal to it, perhaps the same terminal from the remote
office or perhaps the system administrator's terminal at
the central office so he could inspect the status of the
process and close it down gracefully?

  -- Frank
  frank.sergeant@pobox.com


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