Question

Is it possible to have several command prompts running simultaneously and switch between them, without using a GUI?

Background

I have installed CentOS-5.5-i386 without any extras, so I have a bash command prompt with root access but no GUI as far as I know.

I have written a simple Java servlet using Jetty. When I run it, it gets to a couple of commands like this;

server.start();
server.join();

where it waits for incoming requests forever – ie. it never returns to the command prompt.

I want to run a web server without the overhead of a GUI. How can I run my Java program and also continue to use the server from a command prompt?

I apologise for the waffly nature of this question but I am both a Linux newbie and a Java newbie.

Regards,

Nigel

Answer 1

You can switch between consoles using Alt+F1 to Alt+F6. For more shortcuts take a look here: http://linux.about.com/od/linux101/l/blnewbie5_1.htm