Bg, fg and jobs

From Linuxintro
Revision as of 09:53, 16 December 2011 by imported>ThorstenStaerk

bg, fg and jobs are process related commands that belong together. bg stands for background and fg stands for foreground.

Concept

When you start a program under Linux, by default the command runs in the foreground. This means the console is reserved for in- and output to and from this program. You do not get a prompt while the program is running. Here is an example for this showing the program xclock being called by the command

xclock

Snapshot-fg-xclock.png

This program runs in the foreground, the console is reserved for its in- and output. To run the same program in the background, start it with the ampersand ("&") after the program name:

xclock &