raspberry-piuart

Picocom command no longer works after detach

I am attempting to log UART data from my USB port to an output file. The following command works.

picocom /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200 | ts '[%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S]' >> ~/output.log

However, once I attempt to detach from this process,

picocom /dev/ttyUSB0 -b 115200 | ts '[%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S]' >> ~/output.log &

the command no longer works.

How can I detach from this process and let my logger run in the background?

Solution

  • You could use something like tmux, screen, or dtach. For example, using dtach:

    dtach -n /tmp/serial sh -c 'picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0 > output.log'

    This will start picocom detached from the terminal; it will happily continue running until you re-attach to it and exit:

    dtach -a /tmp/serial

    You can do the same thing with tmux:

    tmux new-session -s serial -d 'picocom -b 115200 /dev/ttyUSB0 > output.log'

    You can then re-attach to that session...

    tmux attach -t serial

    ...and exit picocom.