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