Linux Application Development, Second Edition

Chapter 15. Job Control

Job control, a feature standardized by POSIX.1 and mandated by many standards, allows a single terminal to run multiple jobs. Each job is a group of one or more processes, usually connected by pipes. Mechanisms are provided to move jobs between the foreground and the background and to prevent background jobs from accessing the terminal.

Job Control Basics

Recall from Chapter 10 that each active terminal runs a single group of processes, called a session. Each session is made up of process groups, and each process group contains one or more individual processes.

One of the process groups in a session is the foreground process group. The rest are background process groups. The foreground process group may be changed to any process ...