pt — daemonless background processes for Linux (WIP)

Run and manage background processes without daemon or root privileges. pt is a small process manager with limited capabilities

pt stands for process tool.

Features

Run arbitrary command in background. The process will be adopted by /sbin/init.
No daemon needed. pt just stores pidfile in runtime directory and checks procfs on invokation.
Run commands defined in the configuration file.
Set environment and working directory for process.
Run commands selected by labels.
Print defined commands and currently running commands.
[not implemented] Run commands without writing configuration file.
[not implemented] TUI.

Install

Prebuilt binary

Look for statically linked binaries on the releases page.

Build from source

First install V compiler.

Then do:

git clone https://github.com/gechandesu/pt.git
cd pt
make
make install

Next step is configuration.

Configuration

Default configuration file is ~/.ptrc. This is TOML format file.

See full configuration example with comments in ptrc.toml.

Usage

For example run SOCKS5 proxy over SSH. For this example to work, your computer must have ~/.ssh/config configured and the remote server must also have your SSH key. The ~/.ptrc content:

# vim: ft=toml
[entry.ssh-tunnel]
description = 'SSH tunnel to %server%'
labels = ['ssh', 'pl']
exec = [
    '/usr/bin/ssh',
    '-NT',
    '-oServerAliveInterval=60',
    '-oExitOnForwardFailure=yes',
    '-D',
    '127.0.0.1:1080',
    '192.168.0.1', # server address or hostname here
]

Start process:

$ pt start ssh-tunnel

Show running processes:

$ pt ps

Stop ssh-tunnel:

$ pt stop ssh-tunnel
# OR send signal explicitly
$ pt signal TERM ssh-tunnel

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