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Nohup Job Duration Calculator

Work out nohup job duration instantly with clear inputs, formula shown and shareable results.

About Nohup Job Duration Calculator

A long-running detached job faces a compounding risk of interruption: at 2 percent per hour, a 90-hour run has only about a 16 percent chance of finishing untouched. Checkpointing bounds the loss to half the checkpoint interval on average, which is what turns a long job from all-or-nothing into resumable work.

Formula

Long job survival

runtime = data / throughput; P(complete) = (1 - hourly failure rate)^runtime hours; expected lost work = checkpoint interval / 2

Worked example

With the default values below, Nohup Job Duration Calculator returns Expected runtime of 1.54. Change any input above and every figure here is recalculated in your browser.

Inputs used

Data to processminimum 0.001 GB
500 GB
Processing throughputminimum 0.001 MB/s
90 MB/s
Checkpoint intervalminimum 0.1 min
30 min
Chance of interruption per houraccepts 0–100 %
2 %

Results

Expected runtime
1.54 h
Chance of completing uninterrupted
96.9%
Expected interruptions
0.03
Work lost per interruption
15.0 min

Step by step

  1. 1Values used
  2. 2Long job survival
  3. 3Expected runtime= 1.54 h
  4. 4Chance of completing uninterrupted= 96.9
  5. 5Expected interruptions= 0.03
  6. 6Work lost per interruption= 15.0 min

Assumptions and limits

  • The result is derived only from the 4 inputs listed above. Anything not among them is not part of the calculation.
  • In particular, this calculator does not take inflation, tax, fees or charges or compounding frequency into account.
  • Figures are rounded for display to 2 decimal places, so totals built from several rounded parts can differ slightly from the unrounded arithmetic.

How these calculators are built and tested is described on the Methodology page. If a figure looks wrong, please report it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is nohup the right tool?

For a fire-and-forget job it works, but a systemd unit or a tmux session gives restart handling, logging and the ability to reattach. nohup only detaches from the terminal.

How often should a job checkpoint?

Frequently enough that redoing the work costs less than the checkpoint overhead. Balancing the two usually lands between five and thirty minutes.

Related Calculators

Nohup Job Duration Calculator – Calculate Expected runtime