I'm preparing a script for Docker, which allows only one top-level process, which should receive the signals so we can stop it. Therefore, I'm having a script like this: one application writes to syslog (bash script in this sample), and the other one just prints it. #! /usr/bin/env bash set -eu tail -f /var/log/syslog & exec bash -c 'while true ; do logger aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ; sleep 1 ; done' Almost solved: when the top-level process bash gets SIGTERM -- it exists, but tail -f continues to run. How do I instruct tail -f to exit when the parent process exits? E.g. it should also get the signal. Note: Can't use bash traps since exec on the last line replaces the process completely.