Doing another task while copying a directory

Question

Am on Server 17.10 and am copying a directory that is some 500Gb in size, so is there a way to continue doing something else while the directory copies?? The transfer has already been started and there is no progress report, only the cursor blinking.

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 27 '18 at 09:23

You can run the command in the background by appending the & symbol to the command line:

cp source_directory target_directory &

You can query current background tasks with the 'jobs' command.

If you forget to use the & in the initial command it is possible to pause it with Ctrl+Z, then move the command to the background by typing bg and pressing Enter.

Doing another task while copying a directory

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