Bash job control

Jobs are processes linked with the shell process that can run in the foreground or background (or be paused). Bash provides various ways to manage jobs.

Managing jobs

• Use & at the end of a command to run it in background, like ping &
• Use & disown at the end of a command to run it in the background and detach it from the current session (so that when the shell dies, it would still be running), like so: ping -c 100 &disown
• Use Ctrl-Z to background and suspend a process
• Use bg to have a suspended job continue running in the background.
• Use fg to have a background job return to the foreground. If the job is suspended, the job will automatically continue.
• You can use kill on jobs too.

Referencing a job

You will need to refer to a specific job in the commands above if there are more than one job in the background.

• Use jobs to list jobs under the current session.
• %num : refers by job number, e.g. kill %1
• %cmd : refers by the beginning of a job command such as %nmap
• %+ or %% : current job
• %- : previous job