Newton Lab Unix Help


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Basic Unix Commands

Here are descriptons of a few Unix commands that are used frequently. The italic numbers next to the descriptions, are references to page numbers in "Unix in a Nutshell" by O'Reilly & Associates. ls: List the files in the current directory. 2-67 The example below shows the contents of the /usr directory. /usr% ls 4lib/ dict@ lost+found/ preserve@ tmp@ 5bin@ dt/ mail@ pub@ ucb/ X11R6/ games/ man@ sadm/ ucbinclude/ adm@ include/ net/ sbin/ ucblib/ aset/ kernel/ news@ share/ vmsys/ ls -l: List in long format, giving mode, number of links, owner, group, size in bytes, and time of last modifica- tion for each file (see above). If the file is a spe- cial file, the size field instead contains the major and minor device numbers rather than a size. If the file is a symbolic link, the filename is printed fol- lowed by and the pathname of the referenced file. ls -a Force printing of non-printable characters to be in the octal \ddd notation. ls -F Put a slash (/) after each filename if the file is a directory, an asterisk (*) if the file is an execut- able, and an at-sign (@) if the file is a symbolic link. NOTE: any of the above arguments to the ls command can be used any combination. /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% ls -alF total 1521 -rw------- 1 rrothert 71 May 17 11:02 #.article# drwx------ 2 rrothert 512 May 17 11:03 ./ drwxr-xr-x 11 rrothert 2048 May 17 11:02 ../ -rwxr-xr-x 1 rrothert 1034 May 17 11:03 .cshrc* -rwx------ 1 rrothert 1627 May 17 11:03 .login* -rw------- 1 rrothert 5954 May 17 11:02 1 -rw------- 1 rrothert 143 May 17 11:02 HTML.add -rw------- 1 rrothert 19 May 17 11:02 freenet -rw------- 1 rrothert 407 May 17 11:02 jobs -rw------- 1 rrothert 432224 May 17 11:02 mbox -rw------- 1 rrothert 0 May 17 11:02 phone -rw------- 1 rrothert 1073973 May 17 11:02 sunsite.ls-lR cd: Change directory. 2-14 The example below changes the current working directory to the directory specified in the cd argument. /usr% cd /home/lab1 /home/lab1% The cd command is also used to return to the "home" directory. Use no arguments to do this. /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% cd /home/lab1x/rrothert% To go up a directory, cd .. /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% cd .. /home/lab1x/rrothert% cp: Copy file1 to file2 , or copy one or more files to the same names under a directory. 2-19 /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% cp maple1.ms maple1.ms.bak /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% ls maple1.ms maple1.ms.bak To copy all the files of one directory to another directory, the special character * is used. Below, all the files in in the directory are copied to the foo directory. /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% cp * foo man: Display information from the on-line reference manuals. This is helpful when searching for more information on a particular command. 2-71 /home/lab1x/rrothert% man ls Reformatting page. Wait... done ls(1) User Commands ls(1) NAME ls - list contents of directory SYNOPSIS ls [ -abcCdfFgilLmnopqrRstux1 ] [ names ] AVAILABILITY SUNWcsu DESCRIPTION For each directory argument, ls lists the contents of the directory; for each file argument, ls repeats its name and any other information requested. The output is sorted alphabetically by default... When using man, the space bar scrolls down, b scrolls up, and / searches the man page for a specified string. more: Display the named files on a terminal, one screenful at a time. 2-73 When using more, the space bar scrolls down, b scrolls up, and / searches the man page for a specified string. mv: Command used to move files and directories around the system or to rename them. 2-74 Example 1 : Renaming a file /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% mv maple1.ms hey.ms /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% ls hey.ms maple1.ms.bak # above the file maple1.ms gets renamed to hey.ms Example 2 : moving a file to a different location. /home/lab1x/rrothert/test% mv hey.ms /tmp # above the file hey.ms gets moved to the /tmp directory lpr: Sends files to a printer. 2-65 Please see the lab monitor if you have questions about which printer to use. Use the -P option to specify a certain printer. /home/lab1x/rrothert% lpr -Pnp hey.txt lpq: Display the current printer que. lprm: Remove jobs from the printer que. rm: Delete one or more files. 2-91 rm -i Interactive. With this option, rm prompts for confirmation before removing any write-protected files. It overrides the -f option and remains in effect even if the standard input is not a terminal. rm -r: Recursively remove directories and subdirectories in the argument list. rm -f: USE WITH CAUTION!! Remove all files (whether write-protected or not) in a directory without prompting the user. In a write- protected directory, however, files are never removed (whatever their permissions are), but no messages are displayed. If the removal of a write-protected direc- tory is attempted, this option will not suppress an error message. /home/lab1x/rrothert% rm hey.txt


Special Characters

! & * ~ % ! : & : Used to put a process in the background immediately when it is executed. This allows you to use the shell while a process is being executed. Example: netscape & This example would start netscape and return a command prompt while netscape is executing * : This is a wild card symbol. Example: apollo:/src2/usr/bin# ls -l e* -rwxr-xr-t 2 root root 1453078 Dec 18 01:09 emacs* -rwxr-xr-t 2 root root 1453078 Dec 18 01:09 emacs-19.28* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 1088548 Dec 18 01:45 emacs.tty* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8196 Dec 18 01:09 emacsclient* -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 28676 Dec 18 01:09 etags* This example lists all the files in the /src2/usr/bin directory that starts with an e. Note the * next to each of the filenames. This indicates the file is an executable file. ~ : Specifies default home directory for a user. Example: apollo:/usr/src/linux> cd ~ apollo:~> pwd /home/ren Example 2 : apollo:~> cd ~ged apollo:~> pwd /home/ged % : Usefull when used in combination with 'jobs' and 'kill' Example: home/lab1x/rrothert% jobs [1] + Running netscape http://www [2] - Running emacs [3] Running netscape [4] Running xmaple /home/lab1x/rrothert% kill -9 %3 This would kill the 3rd netscape job.


fg: Put a process in the foreground. bg: Put a process in the backgroud. ps: report process status grep: Search a file for a pattern. kill: terminate a process gzip: compress or expand files


Commonly used applications...

vi : a visual editor pine: a Program for Internet News and Email ftp: file transfer program pico: simple text editor in the style of the Pine Composer emacs: editor,mail,news,more... lynx: a non graphical client to access the World Wide Web netscape: a graphical client to access the World Wide Web

Here are some more Unix help links.


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4-4-95