How do I run a process in the background?
Author: Deron Eriksson
Description: This Linux tutorial demonstrates how to run a process in the background.
Tutorial created using: CentOS release 4.6


It's possible to run a process in the background in Linux by following the command with an ampersand (&). Running a process in the background allows you to continue to use a terminal window while the process is running rather than having to wait for the process to complete in order to use the window.

Here, I'll start a grep command and a sleep command in the background by following each command with an ampersand.

grep -r jamtland * &
sleep &

We can see that the processes are running in the background by issuing a "ps" command.

running processes in the background