Running a command in the background from the terminal is a regular task when you need to start a time-consuming task and proceed to work with the terminal.

There is a little difference between doing the same thing on Linux and Windows command line, but it still not so complex.

Run a task in the background on Linux, Mac using & (session dependent running)

As easy as this:

[terminal-command] &

Example:

sleep 30 &

In 30 seconds you will see the output like this:

[1]  + done       sleep 30

Same, but with redirection of stdout and strerr to file:

[terminal-command] &> [output-file-name] 2>&1

Same, but with redirection of stdout and strerr to /dev/null (when you don’t need the output in file = no output):

[terminal-command] &> /dev/null 2>&1

What is 2>&1 means here?

&1 means – redirect stderr to the same place as stdout >, 2 means stderr. As a result, both stdout and stderr will be redirected to /dev/null.

To see all processes running, just type:

jobs

You will see output like this:

[1]  + running    sleep 30

[1] – is a job id, and + means that this is the last job started or moved to the foreground if you see - then it means that it’s the second last you run of one that moved to the foreground.

Bring the latest Process to the foreground:

fg

Bring Process to the foreground by id:

fg %[process-id]

Example:

fg %2

To suspend the running process just press Ctrl+Z.

For example, run sleep command:

sleep 90

After the process starts, just press Ctrl+Z and you will see:

^Z
zsh: suspended  sleep 90

To bring the suspended process to background, type:

bg

To see if it goes to background, type:

jobs
[1]  + running    sleep 90

Run a task in the background on Linux, Mac using nohup (session independent running)

When you run a process in the background with & and bg command, then the process will stop after you logout from the terminal session. If you want the process to continue running after session logout, use nohup terminal util. It also gives you ability to start executing some command and move to other work in terminal while some command executing in background.

To do that, use this pattern:

nohup [teminal-command-with-options] &

By default, nohup will send output to nohup.out file in the current directory. Errors will be also redirected to nohup.out file.

To change the file name where all the output will be redirected to, use default shell redirection:

nohup [terminal-command] > [output-file-name] &

To see how it works, lets try to create custom log file with nohup output (tailing system logs). Try to execute:

nohup tail -f /var/log/system.log > system.log &

you will see output like this:

[1] 33445

It means that this job goes to background and has id: 1, type jobs to check that. Output example:

[1]  + running    nohup tail -f /var/log/system.log > system.log

You can see now, that in your current directory, you have file: system.log with part of the same content that you have in /var/log/system.log.

Try now to logout from the shell and log in again. Then type:

ps aux | grep system.log

You will see something like this:

user             33445   0.0  0.0  4277400    560   ??  SN    5:43PM   0:00.01 tail -f /var/log/system.log

Run a task in the background on Windows using START (session independent running)

On Windows Command Prompt there is an alternative of & Linux command called START.

To check how it works, just type in cmd:

HELP START

You will get on Windows 10 something like this:

Starts a separate window to run a specified program or command.

START ["title"] [/D path] [/I] [/MIN] [/MAX] [/SEPARATE | /SHARED]
      [/LOW | /NORMAL | /HIGH | /REALTIME | /ABOVENORMAL | /BELOWNORMAL]
      [/NODE <NUMA node>] [/AFFINITY <hex affinity mask>] [/WAIT] [/B]
      [command/program] [parameters]

    "title"     Title to display in window title bar.
    path        Starting directory.
    B           Start application without creating a new window. The
                application has ^C handling ignored. Unless the application
                enables ^C processing, ^Break is the only way to interrupt
                the application.
    I           The new environment will be the original environment passed
                to the cmd.exe and not the current environment.
    MIN         Start window minimized.
    MAX         Start window maximized.
    SEPARATE    Start 16-bit Windows program in separate memory space.
    SHARED      Start 16-bit Windows program in shared memory space.
    LOW         Start application in the IDLE priority class.
    NORMAL      Start application in the NORMAL priority class.
    HIGH        Start application in the HIGH priority class.
    REALTIME    Start application in the REALTIME priority class.
    ABOVENORMAL Start application in the ABOVENORMAL priority class.
    BELOWNORMAL Start application in the BELOWNORMAL priority class.
    NODE        Specifies the preferred Non-Uniform Memory Architecture (NUMA)
                node as a decimal integer.
    AFFINITY    Specifies the processor affinity mask as a hexadecimal number.

To start some command in background, use pattern:

START /B [command-prompt-command] 2>&1

To send output to file, just use:

START /B [command-prompt-command] > [output-file-name] 2>&1

Same, but send output to nowhere (NUL on Windows is same as /dev/null on Linux/Mac):

START /B [command-prompt-command] > NUL 2>&1

2>&1 here means the same thing as it does in Linux.