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Job

also: background job, foreground job

A job is a process or group of processes that are managed as a single unit by the shell, typically running in the foreground or background of your terminal session.

In Linux, a job refers to a command or pipeline that you launch from the shell. The shell tracks jobs so you can manage multiple processes within a single terminal session without needing to know their process IDs.

Each job is assigned a job number (like [1], [2], etc.) by the shell. You can run jobs in the foreground (blocking your terminal input) or in the background (running while you continue typing). For example, sleep 100 & launches sleep as a background job.

Common job management commands include jobs (list all jobs), fg (bring a job to foreground), bg (resume a suspended job in background), and kill %1 (terminate job number 1). You can suspend a foreground job with Ctrl+Z and then resume it later.

Related terms