Suspending processes

Suspending a foreground process

You can suspend a process that is in the foreground by typing Control-z. To do so, press and hold down the Control key and then press z.

You should get a message that the process was suspended and perhaps even some brief instructions for restarting the process.

Suspending a background process

To suspend a process which is already in the background, use the stop command, whose syntax is

stop %job_number or PID

That is, you type stop % and then the job number or PID. For example

unity% stop 22632
[1]  + Suspended (signal)     oclock
unity%

Realize that suspended processes aren't gone, they're just idling. You can restart them at any time with either the fg or bg command, depending on where you want the process to run.

Last modified July 20, 2004 by cawalker