jobs — List shell jobs

Linux / Service and process management / jobs.html

A shell builtin that lists background and stopped jobs managed by the current shell.

Basic Information

What is this command?

jobs is a builtin that lists job numbers and states for the current shell session.

Those job numbers feed bg, fg and kill; jobs from other shells are invisible.

What problems does it solve?

• See whether a background job finished.
• Find the number needed to resume a stopped job.
• Review the state of several jobs at once.
• Clean up remaining jobs in a script.

Key features

Job list

Prints running, stopped and finished jobs with numbers.

• When to use: Checking job state in the current shell
• What you get: Job numbers and states
• Limitations: Jobs in other shells are not shown

Include PIDs

The -l option also shows the process group ID.

• When to use: When working with PIDs directly
• What you get: Mapping of job number to PID
• Limitations: Output differs from external tools

Selecting by state

You can list only running or only stopped jobs.

• When to use: When resuming only stopped jobs
• What you get: Only the requested state
• Limitations: Job numbers are session specific

Installation and usage

Check whether it is installed

help jobs

man bash # jobs is a shell builtin

Real-world examples

List jobs

Show jobs in the current shell.

# Show jobs in the current shell
jobs

With PIDs

Show process group IDs too.

# Include process group IDs
jobs -l

Stopped only

List only stopped jobs.

# List only stopped jobs
jobs -s