starting something in the background

[eXtremist]

Can I start and send a program to the background with one command?

I want to zip up an entire disk, and I want to do it in the background. I know I can start it, press ctrl-z to stop it, and then use bg to move it to the background... But can I do it in one single command??

[holloway]

Just add '&' to the end of the command, eg:

foobar&

If you want to log out or something while its doing it maybe use nohup or something (nohup foobar&)