Slackware Linux Essentials
Prev	Chapter 11 Process Control	Next

11.2 Foregrounding

+ +

If you need to interact with a backgrounded process, you can bring it back into the +foreground. If you've only got one backgrounded process, you can bring it back by +typing:

+ + + + + +

+% fg
+

+ +

If the program is not done running, the program will take control over you terminal +and you will not be returned to a prompt. Sometimes, the program will finish running +while backgrounded. In this instance, you'll get a message like this:

+ + + + + +

+[1]+  Done              /bin/ls $LS_OPTIONS
+

+ +

That tells you that the backgrounded process (in this case ls +- not terribly interesting) has completed.

+ +

It is possible to have several processes backgrounded at once. When this happens, +you'll need to know which process you want to bring back to the foreground. Just typing +fg will foreground the process that was last backgrounded. What +if you had a whole list of processes in the background? Luckily, bash includes a command +to list all the processes. It's called jobs and gives output +like so:

+ + + + + +

+% jobs
+[1]   Stopped                 vim
+[2]-  Stopped                 amp
+[3]+  Stopped                 man ps
+

+ +

This shows you a list of all the processes that are backgrounded. As you can see, they +are all stopped. This means that the processes are suspended. The number is a sort of ID +for all the backgrounded processes. The ID with a plus sign beside it (man ps) is the process that will be foregrounded if you just type +fg.

+ +

If you wanted to foreground vim, you would type:

+ + + + + +

+% fg 1
+

+ +

and vim would spring back up to the console. Backgrounding +processes can be very useful if you only have one terminal open over a dialup connection. +You can have several programs running on that one terminal, periodically switching back +and forth between them.