title: How do you run a shell command in the background and suppress all output?
body: <p>I'm trying to write a Shell script (for use in Mac OSX Termninal) that will run a command to start a development server (gulp serve). I have it working except the server is continuously running so it doesn't allow me to enter subsequent commands in the same window without stopping the server (Control+C). My question is, is there a way I can run the process in the background and/or suppress any/all output?  My goal is to also write a 'stop server' command that will kill the process (which I'm also unsure how to do). I've tried all combinations of using ampersands and &amp;>/dev/null and nothing quite works. Here's what I have so far:</p>
  
  <pre><code>if [ "$1" = "server" ]
  then
    if [ "$2" = "on" ]
    then
      cd / &amp; gulp serve --gulpfile /server/example/gulpfile.js # the output is still shown
      printf "\033[0;32mserver is online.\033[0m\n"
    else
      killall tail &amp;&gt;/dev/null 2&gt;&amp;1 # this doesn't kill the process
      printf "\033[0;32mportals is offline.\033[0m\n"
    fi
  fi
  </code></pre>