We are starting our Jenkins CI with the following bash command that I would like understand. Could someone explain what is doing (the only bit I get is "java -jar jenkins.war"). Thanks!
nohup java -jar jenkins.war > $HOME/jenkins.log 2>&1 < /dev/null &
The nohup means it will continue to run when you exit the shell.
The > means redirect the standard output to a file
The file it is being redirected to is $HOME/jenkins.log. You can find the value of $HOME by running echo $HOME
2>&1 means redirect standard errors to standard output, so in this example will also go into $HOME/jenkins.log.
The < /dev/null means read data in from /dev/null. So if the script is expecting input it will read that instead of waiting for user input.
And the & means run as a background task, and return you to the command line.
If you want more detail, ask in the comments.
