“There are stopped jobs” when I try to quit terminal

Question

I am using terminal.app on a MacBookPro running Mac OSX Lion 10.7.5. When I try to exit the terminal, I get a message "There are stopped jobs" and the exit fails.

What does this error message mean, and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

The reason that this happens is because there is a stopped job still open in that terminal window (duh!). Typically this happens when a program is run and suspended (with ctrlz).

To get a list of such jobs, use the command jobs on the terminal and use fg to revive each of those jobs and quit them properly. Once this is done, terminal can be exited normally.

Of course, a simpler solution (not one that I would advise, though) would be to simply close the terminal with the mouse, ignoring any warning messages.

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