unix shell background

Launch a Process to Background

adds an & after the command

The program will still write to stdout

We can use command > /dev/null 2>&1 & to suppress that (redirect stdout to /dev/null and stderr to stdout)

To Foreground the Process

We can use fg. To see a list of jobs, we can use jobs

To Background a Currently Running Process

Press Ctrl + Z to put the current process on sleep and return to shell, then use bg to resume the job in background.

References

• bash - Run a shell script and immediately background it, however keep the ability to inspect its output - Stack Overflow