What is "Exit 2" from finished background job status?

Question

I have an exercise to put in a file some data (*conf from some directories) and need to do this in background. I did it and I am wondering what is the meaning of output messages:

[A@localhost tests]$ ls -ld /etc/*conf /usr/*conf > test1_6_conf.txt 2>&1 &

Enter rises this row:

[1] 2533

what does it mean? After other Enter, another messages appear

[A@localhost tests]$
[1]+  Exit 2                  ls --color=auto -ld /etc/*conf /usr/*conf > test1_6_conf.txt 2>&1

What does it mean? What is "Exit 2"?

Enter an check results - seems to be all OK.

[A@localhost tests]$
[A@localhost tests]$ ls -l test1_6_conf.txt
-rw-rw-r--. 1 A A 2641 Nov 22 14:19 test1_6_conf.txt
[A@localhost tests]$ 

I am using CentOS 6.4, Gnome Terminal Emulator.

Solution

That mean command has finished with exit status different than 0 (success).

Try to not put (&) at the end, to see what happen.

If that command take a lot when running, you could check it with:

lnx#> jobs -l

Comments

[Admin]

O! Thanks. Now I've realized that ls /usr/*conf return 2 since there no any filenames containing "conf".

[Admin]

@ALZ, note that it returns 2 because it cannot find the file called /usr/*conf. And bash is passing it that filename because it can't find files that match that pattern. Better shells like zsh would have returned a "no match" error and not run ls at all.