Resuming Suspended Jobs with the bg Command in Linux

In Linux, there is a handy command called bg that allows you to resume a suspended job. This command is particularly useful when you want to free up your terminal and continue working on other tasks while a command executes in the background.

When you have a command running, you can suspend it by pressing ctrl-Z. This action immediately stops the command and returns you to the shell terminal. However, the suspended job can be resumed and executed in the background using the bg command.

Here’s a simple example to illustrate how the bg command works. Let’s assume you have two commands that are currently suspended:

To resume the execution of Job #1 in the background, you can simply run the command bg 1. Alternatively, if you don’t provide a job number, the bg command will default to resuming Job #1 from the list.

It’s worth noting that the bg command works not only on Linux but also on macOS, WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux), and any UNIX-based environments.

Tags: Linux commands, bg, job management