What you Need to Know about Linux Wait Command
One thing about Linux is that you must learn how to use various commands; this is because Linux doesn't support a GUI, and every action has a specific command to trigger it.
One of the most common Linux commands is the wait command. In this article, you can learn about the Linux wait command and how you can effectively access Ext4, UFS2, ZFS partitions on Windows using an intuitive freeware program; this program works perfectly for people who dual-boot on their PCs, but love to access Linux from Windows.
Here you will find out:
- about Linux wait command
- how to use it
- when DiskInternals can help you
Are you ready? Let's read!
The Linux wait command
The Linux wait command, or Bash wait command, is an essential Bash shell command that primarily halts your script from processing further and waits for a specified process to complete or exit before continuing. This command is used to prevent conflicts in the flow of your script.
However, the wait command looks for an identified process in the process ID (PID) or job in the job ID (jobid), then reports its exit status. Thus, in a situation where the ID is not specified, the wait command will halt and wait for all the running child processes.
How to turn on wait manually
To use the wait command, all you need do is to identify a process ID number; the wait command will then pause your script until the defined process terminates (that is, it outputs an exit code).
However, you can turn on the wait command manually for your scripts, but it’s a bit of a technical task. The following explains how to turn on the wait command manually in your shell script.
Wait, waitpid - wait for process termination
Where the value of PID is less than -1
A manual wait command will wait for any child process with the defined group ID to match with the value of the PID.
Where the value of PID is -1
This will instruct your script to wait for child processes.
Where the value of PID is 0
This will wait for any child process in a group ID that is equal to that of the calling process.
Where the value of PID is > 0
This means to wait for the child whose process ID is equal to the value of the PID.
The value of options in the Linux wait command is OR or zero of any of the following constants:
The value of options is an OR of zero or more of the following constants:
WNOHANG: returns immediately if no child has exited.
WUNTRACED: returns child processes that have stopped or not yet reported.
How to get access to Linux files from Windows
If you’re trying to access your Linux files when booting to Windows on your dual-boot PC, DiskInternals Linux Reader is an intuitive freeware program that grants you such access. It comes with an intuitive interface where you can view and access all Linux-formatted partitions (Ext2/3/4, ReFS, UFS2, XFS). Interestingly, this freeware does not work with any algorithm.
However, DiskInternals Linux Reader does not grant you access to edit the files saved on Linux partitions. You can only view them and copy the data to a Windows partition.