How to write a shell script to open four terminals and execute a command in each? - linux

Question

So I'm trying to create a shell script to do open up four terminal windows (konsoles preferably) and run a command in each and then keep each of those terminals open so I can continue to execute commands in them if desired.
I tried following the instructions listed here:
How to create a shell script to launch 3 terminals and execute a set of commands in each?
and
How can I make a script that opens terminal windows and executes
commands in them?
and after trying those details the best I have is the following:
#!/bin/bash
# some older test, doesn't work and complains and I get this message on command line: "QApplication::qAppName: Please instantiate the QApplication object first"
# I also can't enter text after command executes
#echo "Hello World!"
#exec konsole --noclose -e cat ~/.aliases
# opens terminal but then I can't control terminal afterwards
xterm -hold -e "echo Hello My World"
# didn't do anything
#exit 0
# didn't do anything except make me type exit an extra time where I executed my shell script
#$SHELL
EDIT:
Using Roberto's answer I get four terminals like this, but I can't enter additional commands, notice how there is no prompt like "mycomputername> ":
EDIT 2:
I found an even better way to do what I want. The script below will execute the commands listed in the cmds array in a separate terminal. So echo 'hello1' will run in one terminal, and echo 'hello2' will run in another terminal. This will continue for as many commands listed in the cmds array
!/bin/bash
# Shell script to open terminals
# and execute a separate command in each
# Commands to run (one per terminal)
cmds=('echo 'hello1'', 'echo 'hello2'')
# Loop through commands, open terminal, execute command
for i in "${cmds[#]}"
do
xterm -e "$i && /bin/tcsh" &
done

Answer 1

Konsole
multiple windows
#!/usr/bin/env bash
konsole --noclose -e echo Hello terminal 1! &
konsole --noclose -e echo Hello terminal 2! &
konsole --noclose -e echo Hello terminal 3! &
konsole --noclose -e echo Hello terminal 4! &
multiple tabs
#!/usr/bin/env bash
konsole --noclose --new-tab -e echo Hello terminal 1! &
konsole --noclose --new-tab -e echo Hello terminal 2! &
konsole --noclose --new-tab -e echo Hello terminal 3! &
konsole --noclose --new-tab -e echo Hello terminal 4! &

Answer 2

You could use a "for" loop, and a "&" to run xterm in background:
#!/bin/bash
# some older test, doesn't work and complains and I get this message on command line: "QApplication::qAppName: Please instantiate the QApplication object first"
# I also can't enter text after command executes
#echo "Hello World!"
#exec konsole --noclose -e cat ~/.aliases
for i in 1 2 3 4
do
# opens terminal but then I can't control terminal afterwards
xterm -hold -e "echo Hello My World" &
done
# didn't do anything
#exit 0
# didn't do anything except make me type exit an extra time where I executed my shell script
#$SHELL

Answer 3

I found this to be quite easily:
#!usr/bin/env bash
echo "Enter the value of n:"
read n
for ((i = 0; i < n; i++ ))
do
xterm -hold -e <enter command> &
# In my case, I used :
# xterm -hold -e sar -P $i 2 5 &
done
And that's pretty much it! Have a good day :)
Note : For those who are newbies, we save this with a file name '.sh'. Also, please note that this will execute n different commands on n different terminals. If you want, you can execute the same command on every terminal, just remove $i from the in do .... done part ;)

Answer 4

On a Linux Mint mate distribution, this will run <commands> in 3 separated terminal windows:
$ cat START.sh
mate-terminal --execute bash -c "<command1>"
mate-terminal --execute bash -c "<command2>"
mate-terminal --execute bash -c "<command3>"
Killing START.sh won't terminate children <commands>.