Linux Crash Course: Background (bg) and Foreground (fg)

[@roymisgbs]

The information here is incomplete, if not misleading. Ctrl + Z is not used to simply background a job and it is significantly different from adding '&' at the end of a command. This guy probably knows it cz he is definitely an expert judging by all his other videos, but was too lazy to explain perhaps:- ----> SUSPEND a job (pause) and send to background & ----> Send to background (but keep it in RUNNING STATE, unpaused) so if you want your already running job to go to background and STAY RUNNING, you have to do the following 2 things: 1. Press Ctrl + Z to suspend the job temporarily and send to background, and still be on the terminal 2. typing next command --> bg ---> this keeps the job in the background but additionally resumes it, and you are still on the terminal. (to know the job ID number you can always run the 'jobs' command) This doesnt matter either ways if you are "backgrounding a text file edit" etc lol, but it DEFINITELY MATTERS when you are running a server in the background! Please like my comment to show love

[@TheGacko]

hah - yes very misleading ... lol I was just on a job showing a guy to ctrl-z a task to gzip this massive file so we could carry on monitoring system .. well .. suffice to say -- today I learned I would suggest Jay really should do a followup -- a good test/exercise is to go through using the sleep command and ctrl-z then bg then keep stacking up some sleep commands in the background and see that they finish as they should etc. also need to cover the standard output .. and perhaps send output to file for a background running task so its not writing to the current standard out etc.

[@manny8717]

I was curious to know what the + and - mean after the job ID so I did ‘man jobs’ and it looks like they’re just last and second to last respectively. I guess not too important but good to know. Loving these videos. Thank you so much, Jay!

[@Ancientreapers]

Ah and what's that number after Example:@8:18 [2] 4760 @9:10 [3] 4762 when one sends the app directly to the bg. I haven't looked it up yet. I'm going to guess the 4760 and 4762 are the byte sizes of the file?

[@Ancientreapers]

Well I was wrong it's the process id. The output includes the job number, process ID

[@BehzodSabirov]

Jay's lecture plus this - and my day is definitely done. Thumbs up

[@YugoGautomo]

@@Ancientreapers yes it process id. you could get the process number using `ps` command.

[@ultradude5410]

I love LLTV. Every video is clear and informative, but Jay still takes the time to cover the less flashy / less interesting yet still important stuff that most channels don’t bother explaining.

[@DaveThompson_RocksLinux]

Brother, that was well done. I've never thought of backgrounding as desktop process management. Very cool.

[@fadi_mousa]

You can uncomment set suspendable in /etc/nanorc file to enable suspension with ctrl+Z for nano

[@sametcoban1604]

I have been following Jay for a while and really find your videos helpful. I purchased your book on mastering Ubuntu server and watching videos in tandem. Thanks for sharing all these and keep up the good work.

[@luisrosal1322]

This channel is getting better by the minute!! Thanks Jay.

[@dagamore]

Great explanation of FG, sounds like a tool I need to be using more than I am, Thanks.

[@asaskald]

All this time I didn't know the jobs command. Thanks Jay!

[@synen]

what about bg is that a command too?

[@AlexDresko]

This clears up so many questions I've had.

[@Felix-ve9hs]

I just wanted to see what the video was about and ended up watching the entire thing to the end :D

[@michaeldina1103]

I always thought the best way to do this is with a multiplexer. This seems a lot more practical in some situations. Thanks!

[@DL-xf3ur]

Thank you Jay! Awesome as always!

[@chuckflowers5448]

I would assume it's related to making nano approachable for people new to the terminal. I imagine most beginners would associate Ctrl+Z with undo and might find themselves with a bg nano process and not know how to recover it.

[@ShinyTechThings]

Looks like I'm first! 😎

[@bkrich]

Great info, I see this helpful if you’re at a console and need to do multiple things. I guess with any modern Linux desktop you probably would use tabs but bf and fg is certainly helpful to know

[@unbekannter_Nutzer]

It is most useful if you do remote login via ssh to a terminal, and don't want to fire up a new xterm locally, to connect a second time to the same server. Or you started preparing some work in a terminal, went to a sub-sub-sub-dir, made new subdir, now you fired up a graphical program like geany or eclipse, but then you realize, you have 1 or 2 more things to do in the shell. Open another terminal and traverse the long path? No. Ctrl-Z, bring the graphic program to a stop, then bg, keep it running but don't have the starting shell been blocked.

[@Randomizer92mx]

Mah boi thanks for the tutorial!

[@JohnBortins]

Outstanding!

[@m.j1436]

This command is amazing

[@Carlos-kv6hx]

Wish I knew about this sooner. Im over here going back and fourth with VIM for no reason.

[@RoadRunner1980]

This was great! I never heard of this.

[@robwoolf6872]

What happens if I have something backgrounded and my putty session to a server times out please?

[@igor.pasternak]

Amazing explanation! Thanks

[@monolofiminimal]

I use this and screen, it's real handy.

[@nathairsgiathach3728]

Thanks man, great explanation!

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Glad it helped!

[@shlomobelleli2556]

Excellent video

[@midnitemonty]

I use VI / VIM alot.. "screen" is also a nice tool to bury and recall terminal sessions.

[@alexgubin78]

Thanks a lot for this video ;-)

[@gokiburijin8478]

Thank you!!!!

[@13thravenpurple94]

Great work Thank you

[@nokkeli]

Finally ! A way to get out of Vim!

[@andrewlhoover]

Very Useful!

[@HaiNguyen-ot6xu]

Video on tmux and mosh please!

[@udayarpandey3937]

Hello Jay..waiting for the remaining Proxmox videos. :)) Thank you

[@LearnLinuxTV]

Editing now! Sorry for the delay. They're coming. 😀

[@d00dEEE]

You need 'disown', too, so you can log out the shell and leave the process running...

[@wesgould1]

or "nohup" --which does the same thing if you know you will be backgrounding a processing (and closing the shell/logging out) before you start it.

[@evodefense]

thx

[@noceuclyde9345]

very usefull !

[@milosgajic23]

nice!

[@billykeed3609]

cool commands

[@weedeater64]

/etc/nanorc to fix then background fuckery in nano. Un-comment the bind line. ##If you want to suspend nano with one keystrok (instead of with ^T^Z): # bind ^Z suspend main

[@sethmoreschi7475]

Well, there you have it, why Steve Jobs wanted Unix/Linux as an operating system.

[@KeithWhittingham]

It's a bit of a shame that bg wasn't better combined with exit so that exit did the same as fg if there were jobs running

[@_den_]

I almost forgot about it, because I use screen

[@Ranblv]

mint does not seem to mind backrounding nano edits