Linux commands: bg

Sep 13, 2020

Learn how the Linux bg command resumes a job you suspended with ctrl-Z, running it in the background so you can keep working in the terminal.

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When a command is running you can suspend it using ctrl-Z.

The command will immediately stop, and you get back to the shell terminal.

You can resume the execution of the command in the background, so it will keep running but it will not prevent you from doing other work in the terminal.

In this example I have 2 commands stopped:

Terminal output showing jobs command with two stopped jobs labeled [1] and [2], both running top command in different directories

I can run bg 1 to resume in the background the execution of the job #1.

I could have also said bg without any option, as the default is to pick the job #1 in the list.

The bg command works on Linux, macOS, WSL, and anywhere you have a UNIX environment

Tagged: CLI · All topics

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