Tuesday Tiny Techie Tip

Background tasks in `csh(1)`

UNIX is a multi-tasking operating system, so multiple jobs can be active at the same time. In modern window-oriented user interfaces, we usually take advantage of this fact by just starting a new window when current windows are busy doing other things and we want to start a new process. But if you have processes which do not require human intervention, you can force them to run in the background to avoid tying up your shell with a long-running task.

To send a task into the background from csh and its brethren, you append the control character "&" to the command line like this:

% alongcommand &
[1] 12593
%

The "[1] 12593" line indicates that this is the first background task in the current shell, and the process ID of the task is 12593.

If your process generates output to stdout or stderr, the output will still show up on your terminal (unless you've done "stty tostop"), so if the output is important, you should redirect it to a file so it isn't lost in the shuffle of whatever else you work on after the task has been spawned.

If your job blocks for input, the job will be stopped and you'll get a message like:

[1]  + Stopped (tty input)  alongcommand
%

To bring a backgrounded task back into the foreground, use the "fg(1)" command. This command accepts a job number prefaced by a percent sign ("%") (the kill shell built-in command will also accept this "%jobnumber" syntax).

% fg %1
alongcommand

Note that the shell echoes the name of the command brought to the foreground. After foregrounding a task, the terminal is reattached to that task, so anything you type will be sent to the task's stdin as if it had never been in the background. To return the task to the background, you first have to get back to the shell by suspending the task with the suspend character ("Ctrl-Z" unless you've changed it)

^Z
Stopped
%

Once the command is stopped and you have control of the shell back, you use the jobs(1) command to check the job number:

% jobs
[1]  + Stopped              alongcommand
%

Once you know the job number you can send it back into the background with the bg(1) command giving the job number prefaced by a percent sign as with fg

% bg %1
[1]    alongcommand &
%

Again, the shell tells you that the command has been placed in the background.

The shell maintains the concept of a current job which is indicated with a plus sign ("+") in the jobs output. When operating on the current job, you can leave off the job number. The act of suspending a task with Ctrl-Z makes that task the current job, so you can skip looking up the job number if you're sending a newly-suspended job to the background.

% alongcommand
^Z
Stopped
% bg
[1]    alongcommand &
%

When a job completes, you'll get a message at the shell like this:

[1]    Done                 alongcommand
%

If you have jobs running in the background of a shell and you exit the shell, the jobs will continue to run until they complete or block for input. There is no way to reattach to a backgrounded job once the shell which spawned it has exited.

If you have stopped jobs, the shell will warn you about them if you try to exit:

% exit
There are stopped jobs.
%

But beware, it will only warn you once, so if you exit after the warning, the stopped jobs will be killed.

Tuesday Tiny Techie Tip -- 17 June 1997
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Written by Jeff Youngstrom

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Tuesday Tiny Techie Tip

Background tasks in csh(1)

Background tasks in `csh(1)`