Foreground and Background Processes

• Usually when running a command in the command shell, the user has to wait for the process to finish before he can do anything else.

• The command is being run as a foreground process.

  • Only one foreground process can be running in a shell at a time.

• A user can have more background processes running at the same time.

• Start a process in the background with &

• Currently running processes can be moved from the foreground to the background and viceversa.

  • CTRL+Z - suspend/pause the process

  • jobs - list the active jobs

  • bg - move the process to the background

  • fg - move the process back to the foreground

• + = fg/bg commands operate on the + process

  • use the job number to fg/bg that process

jobs

• jobs - list all the active jobs

fg / bg

• fg - move jobs to the foreground

• bg - move jobs to the background