How to run a command in the background with 'doas'?

Question

I want to run a command in the background as root. And I have a problem with doas command.

With sudo, I can use sudo --background <command>. It will ask for password, then runs in the background. I cannot do doas <command> & because it will ask for the password in the background and stuck there forever.

I've checked the manpage but did not find the equivalent option for doas.

Answer 1

One way of doing this would be to start an in-line script with either sh -c or bash -c (or whatever shell your command needs) using doas, and let that script run the command in the background. To run multiple sequential commands in the background, collect them in a subshell:

doas sh -c '(sleep 10; echo done) &'

The above command would start a child shell running as root, with a backgrounded subshell that waits 10 seconds before printing the string done. The control of the initial non-root interactive shell would be handed back to the user as soon as the command in the in-line script has started in the background.

This would also work with sudo.