CSC322 C Programming and UNIX - Department of Computer ...

Basic Process Control
You can start processes in the foreground or in the background
– Foreground processes are started by just typing a normal command
– Background processes are started by appending an ampersand (&) to the
command. This is particularly useful for graphical applications: emacs &
– While a foreground process is running, the shell is blocked because the process
is using the terminal as its stdin (i.e. you can have at most one non-suspended
foreground process)
– (Most) foreground processes can be terminated by hitting [C-c] (often written
as ^C).
– (Most) foreground processes can be suspended by hitting [C-z]
– A suspended process can be continued by typing fg (to continue it as a
foreground process) or bg (to let it run in the background)
– A background process will be suspended automatically, if it needs to read data
from stdin
– jobs gives a numbered list of all processes started by the shell
– You can use fg % to take a particular process into the foreground (bg
% works on the same principle)
– You can use kill % to terminate the named job
Stephan Schulz 69