Run a cgi shell script in background

Question

I\'ve a cgi shell script like this

#!/bin/sh

# show the page
echo Content-type: text/html
echo
echo \"Hello world!

        

Answer 1

Close stdout with exec >&- before you execute your long-running or background task. Maybe you'll also have to close stderr. That would be

exec >&-
exec 2>&-

(it seems you can't close both in one line)

This will break the pipe and allow your web server to send the data already outputted (such as via echo) to the browser.