UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

In my last job someone gave me the command to put in my .profile that let me know when a job I had running in the background finished. It was a word about 5 char long. I can't remember it!

If you had started a background job, and with pid information that could be checked from the process table,

either in the /proc VFS
or from the
ps -ef command,

if you had implemented pidfile concept, check for the existence of the file to confirm whether the process had completed executing or not.

Am not sure or aware of the 5 char word that you are referring to, whilst implementing the check you had requested is quite easy

thanks for replying. I can tell when a job stops if I keep hitting enter.

With the code/option, I don't need to keep hitting enter - the screen/command line will suddenly give me a

"[1]+ Done nohup <name of program that's finised>"

It's very nice, because I don't have to keep looking to see if it's done.

thought you might find this useful
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nohup

set -o notify

works under both unix & linux