HI,

I am learning the basics of UNIX on my Mac OS X system but whenever I type the "jobs" command I just get the prompt again, with no output. Regardless of how many programmes or activities are processing.

Any ideas?

The 'jobs' commands lists the child processes which you have started from your current interactive shell and then placed into the background (whether by adding a '&' to the end of the line, or interrupting the command with a CTRL-Z and then typing the 'bg' command).

To list processes on the system you should be using the 'ps' command .. see 'man ps' for more info.

Thanks - will try this later.

Child processes ? Or just processes ?

Vino

Well any command you run from an interactive shell is a child of that interactive shell :-) Even nohup'd processes retain the same parent ID process until the shell is exited.