diff --git a/demos/20span-background-race-workarounds.sh b/demos/20span-background-race-workarounds.sh
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+#!/bin/bash
+# an otel-cli demo of workarounds for race conditions on span background
+#
+# otel-cli span background is usually run as a subprocess with & in the command
+# as below. An issue that shows up sometimes is a race condition where the shell
+# starts otel-cli in the background, and then immediately calls otel-cli span
+# or similar hoping to use the --tp-carrier file, which might not be created
+# before the process looks for it. There are a couple solutions below.
+
+set -e
+set -x
+
+carrier=$(mktemp)    # traceparent propagation via tempfile
+sockdir=$(mktemp -d) # a unix socket will be created here
+
+../otel-cli span background \
+    --tp-carrier $carrier \
+    --sockdir $sockdir \
+    --service $0 \
+    --name "$0 script execution #1" \
+    --timeout 10 &
+
+# On Linux, the inotifywait command will do the trick, waiting for the
+# file to be written. Without a timeout it could hang forever if it loses
+# the race and otel-cli finishes writing the carrier before inotifywait
+# starts watching. A short timeout ensures it won't hang.
+[ ! -e $carrier ] && inotifywait --timeout 0.1 $carrier
+../otel-cli span --tp-carrier $carrier --name "child of span background, after inotifywait"
+../otel-cli span end --sockdir $sockdir
+
+# start another one for the second example
+../otel-cli span background \
+    --tp-carrier $carrier \
+    --sockdir $sockdir \
+    --service $0 \
+    --name "$0 script execution #2" \
+    --timeout 10 &
+
+# otel-cli span event already waits for span background's socket file
+# to appear so just sending an event will do enough synchronization, at
+# the cost of a meaningless event.
+../otel-cli span event --sockdir $sockdir --name "wait for span background"
+../otel-cli span --tp-carrier $carrier --name "child of span background, after span event"
+../otel-cli span end --sockdir $sockdir