Dr. Zulfikar H. A. Kassam ZK-UNIX Tutorials.

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UNIX Operating System

The UNIX operating system
The UNIX operating system is made up of three parts; the kernel, the shell and the programs.
The kernel
The kernel of UNIX is the nub of the operating system: it allocates time and memory to programs
and handles the filestore and communications in response to system calls.
As an illustration of the way that the shell and the kernel work together, suppose a user types rm
myfile (which has the effect of removing the file "myfile"). The shell searches the filestore for
the file containing the program rm, and then requests the kernel, through system calls, to execute
the program rm on myfile. When the process rm myfile has finished running, the shell then
returns the UNIX prompt % to the user, indicating that it is waiting for further commands.

The shell
The shell acts as an interface between the user and the kernel. When a user logs in, the login
program checks the username and password, and then starts another program called the shell. The
shell is a command line interpreter (CLI). It interprets the commands the user types in and
arranges for them to be carried out. The commands are themselves programs: when they
terminate, the shell gives the user another prompt.
The adept user can customize his/her own shell, and users can use different shells on the same
machine.

Tcsh Shell

The tcsh shell has certain features to help the user inputting commands.

Filename Completion - By typing part of the name of a command, filename or directory and
pressing the [Tab] key, the tcsh shell will complete the rest of the name automatically. If the shell
finds more than one name beginning with those letters you have typed, it will beep, prompting
you to type a few more letters before pressing the tab key again.

History - The shell keeps a list of the commands you have typed in. If you need to repeat a
command, use the cursor keys to scroll up and down the list.

UNIX Tutorial One

1) Log into the computer by using the root ID and type in the appropriate password.
2) Optional: You can start Xwindows by typing:
xinit or startx and then start the Konsole application that gives you the command prompt.
3) Determining the shell type by running the following command:
echo $shell

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4) The running shell is ______________________

5) To determine the environment variables, type in the following command:

setenv

6) Use the displayed information to determine the values of these varables:

USER ________________________

HOME ________________________

HOST ________________________

SHELL ________________________

OSTYPE ________________________

PWD ________________________

7) Determine which shells are installed by using the following command:

cat /etc/shells

8) List the shells installed: ___________________________________________________

___________________________________________________________________

9) In order to determine who is logged in, type:

echo $user or whoami.

10) To shutdown the system, type:

shutdown -h now

or to reboot the system, type:

shutdown -r now

Files and processes

Everything in UNIX is either a file or a process.
A process is an executing program identified by a unique PID (process identifier).
A file is a collection of data. They are created by users using text editors, running compilers etc.

Examples of files:

? a document (report, essay etc.)

? the text of a program written in some high-level programming language

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? instructions comprehensible directly to the machine and incomprehensible to a casual

user, for example, a collection of binary digits (an executable or binary file);

? a directory, containing information about its contents, which may be a mixture of other
directories (subdirectories) and ordinary files.

The Directory Structure

All the files are grouped together in the directory structure. The file-system is arranged in a
hierarchical structure, like an inverted tree. The top of the hierarchy is traditionally called "root".

UNIX Tutorial Two

Listing files and directories

ls (list schema)
1) When you first login, your current working directory is your home directory. Your home
directory has the same name as your user-name. In order to determine your home directory,
type the following:

echo $home

Home Directory _________________________________________

2) To ensure that you are in your home directory, type

pwd

This command displays the current directory that you are in.

3) To find out what is in your home directory, type

ls

The ls command lists the contents of your current working directory.

There may be no files visible in your home directory, in which case, the UNIX prompt will be
returned. Alternatively, there may already be some files inserted by the System Manager.

ls does not, in fact, cause all the files in your home directory to be listed, but only those ones
whose name does not begin with a dot (.) Files beginning with a dot (.) are known as hidden files
and usually contain important program configuration information. They are hidden because you
should not change them unless you are very familiar with UNIX and Xwindows.

To list all files in your home directory including those ones, whose names begin with a dot, type

ls -a

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ls is an example of a command which can take options: -a is an example of an option. The

options change the behavior of the command (cf. the difference between ls and ls -a). There are
online manual pages that tell you which options a particular command can take, and how each
option modifies the behavior of the command. (See later in this tutorial)

Making Directories
mkdir (make directory)
We will now make a subdirectory in your home directory to hold the files you will be creating
and using in the course of this tutorial. To make a subdirectory called unixstuff in your current
working directory type
mkdir unixstuff

To see the directory you have just created, type

ls

Changing to a different directory

cd (change directory)
The command cd directory means "change the current working directory to 'directory'.The current
working directory may be thought of as the directory you are in, i.e. your current position in the
file-system tree.

To change to the directory you have just made, type

cd unixstuff

Type ls to see the contents (which should be empty)

Exercise
Make another directory inside the unixstuff directory called projects

The directories . and ..

Still in the unixstuff directory, type

% ls -a

As you can see, in the unixstuff directory (and in all other directories), there are two special
directories called "." and ".."
In UNIX, "." means the current directory, so typing
cd .

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means stay where you are (the unixstuff directory).

This may not seem very useful at first, but using "." as the name of the current directory will save
a lot of typing, as we shall see later in the tutorial.
".." means the parent of the current directory, so typing
cd ..

will take you one directory up the hierarchy (back to your home directory). Try it now.
Note: typing cd with no argument always returns you to your home directory. This is very useful
if you are lost in the file system.

Pathnames
pwd (print working directory)
Pathnames enable you to work out where you are in relation to the whole file-system. For
example, to find out the absolute pathname of your home-directory, cd to your home-directory
and type
pwd

Exercise
Use the commands ls, pwd and cd to explore the file system.
(Remember, if you get lost, type cd by itself to return to your home-directory)

More about home directories and pathnames

Go to your home directory, and type

ls unixstuff

Now type

ls projects

You will get a message like this -

projects: No such file or directory

The reason is, projects is not in your current working directory. To use a command on a file
(or directory) not in the current working directory (the directory you are currently in), you must
specify its full pathname. To list the contents of your projects directory, you must type

ls unixstuff/projects

Home directories can also be referred to by the tilde ~ character. It can be used to specify paths
starting at your home directory. So typing

ls ~/unixstuff

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will list the contents of your unixstuff directory, no matter where you currently are in the file
system.

What do you think

ls ~
would list?

What do you think

ls ~/..
would list?

Summary
ls list files and directories
ls -a list all files and directories
mkdir make a directory
cd directory change to named directory
cd change to home-directory
cd .. change to parent directory
pwd display the path of the current directory

UNIX Tutorial Three

Creating Files
In order to create a file, do the following:

1) Go to the unixstuff directory in your home directory.

2) Type pwd to ensure that you are in that directory.
3) Type cat >test. What this does is that it start recording everything you type into the test file.
4) Type the following lines beginning with the numbers and the colon character:
1:We are learning UNIX.
2:University of Phoenix
3:Vancouver
4:BC
5:Canada
6:North America
7:America
8:Earth
9:Planet
10:Universe
11:Solar System
12:Galaxy

5) Then press Ctrl-D to signal EOF.

6) The test file will contain the text that you type.
7) To see the contents of the test file, do the following:

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cat test

Copying Files
cp (copy)
cp file1 file2 is the command which makes a copy of file1 in the current working
directory and calls it file2

What we are going to do now, is to take a file stored in an open access area of the file system, and
use the cp command to copy it to your unixstuff directory.

First, change directory to your unixstuff directory.

Then at the UNIX prompt, type,

cp test projects/test

The above command means copy the file test to the projects directory, keeping the name the
same.

Moving files
mv (move)
mv file1 file2 moves (or renames) file1 to file2
To move a file from one place to another, use the mv command. This has the effect of moving
rather than copying the file, so you end up with only one file rather than two.

It can also be used to rename a file, by "moving" the file to the same directory, but giving it a
different name.

Change directories to your unixstuff directory.

We are now going to rename (move) the file test to myfile by typing

mv test myfile

Type ls to see if it has worked.

Removing files and directories

rm (remove), rmdir (remove directory)
To delete (remove) a file, use the rm command. As an example, we are going to remove the copy
of the [Link] file in your project directory.
1) First change into your project directory, then type
rm test

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to delete the test file

2) Then change directory to the unixstuff directory.

3) Use the rmdir command to remove a directory (make sure it is empty first). Try to remove
the project directory.

Displaying the contents of a file on the screen

clear (clear screen)
Before you start the next section, you may like to clear the terminal window of the previous
commands so the output of the following commands can be clearly understood.
At the prompt, type

clear

This will clear all text and leave you with the % prompt at the top of the window.

cat (concatenate)
The command cat can be used to display the contents of a file on the screen. Type:

cat myfile

more
The command more writes the contents of a file onto the screen a page at a time. Type
more myfile
Press the space-bar if you want to see another page, type q if you want to quit reading. As you
can see, more is used in preference to cat for long files .

head
The head command writes the first ten lines of a file to the screen.
First clear the screen then type
head myfile
Then type
head -5 myfile
What difference did the -5 do to the head command?

tail
The tail command writes the last ten lines of a file to the screen.
Clear the screen and type

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tail myfile

How can you view the last 5 lines of the file?

Searching the contents of a file

Searching using the grep command

grep is one of many standard UNIX utilities. It search files for specified words or patterns. First
clear the screen, then type
grep Canada myfile
As you can see, grep has printed out each line containing the word Canada.
Or has it????

Try typing
grep canada myfile
The grep command is "case sensitive"; it distinguishes between Canada and canada.
To ignore upper/lower case distinctions, use the -i option, i.e. type
grep -i canada myfile

To search for a phrase or pattern, you must enclose it in single quotes. For example to search for
spinning top, type
grep -i 'North America' myfile
Some of the other options of grep are:

-v display those lines that do NOT match

-n precede each matching line with the line number
-c print only the total count of matched lines

Try some of them and see the different results. Don't forget, you can use more than one option at
a time, for example grep -ivc
wc (word count)
A handy little utility is the wc command, short for word count. To do a word count on myfile,
type
wc -w myfile

To find out how many lines the file has, type

wc -l myfile

Summary
cp file1 file2 copy file1 and call it file2
mv file1 file2 move or rename file1 to file2
rm file remove a file
rmdir directory remove a directory
cat file display a file
more file display a file a page at a time
head file display the first few lines of a file
tail file display the last few lines of a file

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grep 'keyword' file search a file for keywords

wc file count number of lines/words/characters in
file

UNIX Tutorial Four

Redirection
Most processes initiated by UNIX commands write to the standard output (that is, they write to
the terminal screen), and many take their input from the standard input (that is, they read it from
the keyboard). There is also the standard error, where processes write their error messages, by
default, to the terminal screen.
We have already seen one use of the cat command to write the contents of a file to the screen.

Now type cat without specifing a file to read

cat
Then type a few words on the keyboard and press the [Return] key.
Finally hold the [Ctrl] key down and press d (written as ^D for short) to end the input.

What has happened?

If you run the cat command without specifing a file to read, it reads the standard input (the
keyboard), and on receiving the "end of file" (^D), copies it to the standard output (the screen).

In UNIX, we can redirect the input and the output of commands.

Redirecting the Output

We use the > symbol to redirect the output of a command. For example, to create a file called
list1 containing a list of fruit, type
cat > list1
Then type in the names of some fruit. Press [Return] after each one.
pear
banana
apple
^D [control d to stop]
The > redirects cat's output, which normally goes to the screen, into a file called list1
To read the contents of the file, type
cat list1

Exercise
Using the above method, create another file called list2 containing the following fruit:
Orange
plum
mango
grapefruit.

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Read the contents of list2

The form >> appends standard output to a file. So to add more items to the file list1, type
cat >> list1
Then type in the names of more fruit
peach
grape
pineapple
^D [control d to stop]
To read the contents of the file, type
% cat list1
We will now use the cat command to join (concatenate) list1 and list2 into a new file called
biglist. Type
cat list1 list2 > biglist
What this is doing is reading the contents of list1 and list2 in turn, then outputing the text to
the file biglist
To read the contents of the file, type
cat biglist

Redirecting the Input

We use the < symbol to redirect the input of a command.
The command sort alphabetically or numerically sorts a list. Type
sort
Then type in the names of some vegetables. Press [Return] after each one.
potato
carrot
onion
^D [control d to stop]
The output will be
carrot
onion
potato
Using < you can redirect the input to come from a file rather than the keyboard. For example, to
sort the list of fruit, type
sort < biglist
and the sorted list will be output to the screen.
To output the sorted list to a file, type,
sort < biglist > slist
Use cat to read the contents of the file slist

Pipes (Optional)
To see who is on the system with you, type
% who
One method to get a sorted list of names is to type,
% who > names
% sort < names

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This is a bit slow and you have to remember to remove the temporary file called names when you
have finished. What you really want to do is connect the output of the who command directly to
the input of the sort command. This is exactly what pipes do. The symbol for a pipe is |
For example, typing
% who | sort
will give the same result as above, but quicker and cleaner.
To find out how many users are logged on, type
% who | wc -l

Exercise (optional)
a2ps textfile > psfile is the command to convert a text file to a postscript file.

lpr -Pgoya psfile is the command to print a postscript file to the printer "goya".

Use the above series of commands to print the text file slist to the postscript printer "goya".

Summary
command > file redirect standard output to a file
command >> file append standard output to a file
command < file redirect standard input from a file
command1 | command2 pipe the output of command1 to the input
of command2
cat file1 file2 > file0 concatenate file1 and file2 to file0
sort sort data
who list users currently logged in
a2ps textfile psfile convert text file to postscript
file
lpr -Pprinter psfile print postscript file to named
printer

UNIX Tutorial Five

Wildcards
The characters * and ?
The character * is called a wildcard, and will match against none or more character(s) in a file (or
directory) name. For example, in your unixstuff directory, type
ls list*
This will list all files in the current directory starting with "list..."
Try typing
ls *list
This will list all files in the current directory ending with "...list"

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The character ? will match exactly one character.

So ls ?ouse will match files like house and mouse, but not grouse.
Try typing
ls ?list

Filename conventions
We should note here that a directory is merely a special type of file. So the rules and conventions
for naming files apply also to directories.
In naming files, characters with special meanings such as / (slash) should be avoided. The safest
way to name a file is to use only alphanumeric characters, that is, letters and numbers, together
with _ (underscore) and . (dot).

File names conventionally start with a lower-case letter, and may end with a dot followed by a
group of letters indicating the contents of the file. For example, all files consisting of Pascal code
may be named with the ending .p, for example, prog1.p . Then in order to list all files
containing Pascal code in your home directory, you need only type ls *.p in that directory.

Beware: some applications give the same name to all the output files they generate. For example,
some compilers, unless given the appropriate option, produced compiled files named [Link].
Should you forget to use the flag, you are advised to rename the compiled file immediately,
otherwise the next such file will overwrite it and it will be lost.

Getting Help
On-line Manuals
There are on-line manuals which gives information about most commands. The manual pages tell
you which options a particular command can take, and how each option modifies the behaviour of
the command. Type man command to read the manual page for a particular command.
For example, to find out more about the wc (word count) command, type
man wc
Alternatively
whatis wc
gives a one-line description of the command, but omits any information about options etc.
Apropos
When you are not sure of the exact name of a command,
apropos keyword
will give you the commands with keyword in their manual page header. For example, try typing
apropos copy

Summary
* match any number of characters
? match one character
man command read the online manual page for a command
whatis command brief description of a command

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apropos keyword match commands with keyword in their man

pages

UNIX Tutorial Six

File system security (access rights)
In your unixstuff directory, type
ls -l (l for long!)
You will see that you now get lots of details about the contents of your directory, similar to the
example below.
total 4
-rwxrw-r-- 1 user1 group1 2450 Sept29 11:52 file1
drwx------ 2 user1 group1 1024 Sep 12 1998 bin
-rw-r--r-- 1 user1 group1 176 Sep 12 1998 file2
drwx------ 3 user1 group1 1024 Sep 14 1998 mail

Each file (and directory) has associated access rights, which may be found by typing ls -l.

In the left-hand column is a 10 symbol ‘word’consisting of the symbols d, r, w, x, -, and,

occasionally, s or S. If d is present, it will be at the left hand end of the word, and indicates a
directory: otherwise ‘-’will be the starting symbol of the word.

The 9 remaining symbols indicate the permissions, or access rights, and are taken as three groups
of 3.

? The left group of 3 gives the file permissions for the owner of the file (or
directory) (ee51ab in the above example);

? the middle group gives the permissions for the group of people to whom the file
(or directory) belongs (eebeng95 in the above example);

? the rightmost group gives the permissions for everyone else.

The symbols r, w, etc., have slightly different meanings depending on whether they refer to a
simple file or to a directory.
Access rights on files.
? r (or -), indicates read permission (or otherwise), that is, the presence or absence
of permission to read and copy the file

? w (or -), indicates write permission (or otherwise), that is, the permission (or
otherwise) to change a file

? x (or -), indicates execution permission (or otherwise), that is, the permission to
execute a file, where appropriate

Access rights on directories.

? r allows users to list files in the directory;

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? w means that users may delete files from the directory or move files into it;

? x means the right to access files in the directory. This implies that you may read
files in the directory provided you have read permission on the individual files.
So, in order to read a file, you must have execute permission on the directory containing that file,
and hence on any directory containing that directory as a subdirectory, and so on, up the tree.
Some examples
-rwxrwxrwx a file that everyone can read, write and execute.
-rw------- a file that only the owner can read and write - no-one
else
can read or write and no-one has execution rights (e.g.
your
mailbox file).

Changing access rights

chmod (changing a file mode)
Only the owner of a file can use chmod to change the permissions of a file. The options of chmod
are as follows
Symbol Meaning
u user
g group
o other
a all
r read
w write (and delete)
x execute
+ add permission
- take away permission
For example, to remove read write and execute permissions on the file biglist for the group
and others, type
chmod go-rwx biglist
This will leave the other permissions unaffected.
To give read and write permissions on the file biglist to all,
chmod a+rw biglist
Try changing the file permissions on the file myfile
Use ls -l to check that the permissions have changed.

Processes and Jobs

A process is an executing program identified by a unique PID (process identifier. To see
information about your processes, with their associated PID and status, type
ps
A process may be in the foreground, in the background, or be suspended. In general the shell does
not return the UNIX prompt until the current process has finished executing.

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Some processes take a long time to run and hold up the terminal. Backgrounding a long process
has the effect that the UNIX prompt is returned immediately, and other tasks can be carried out
while the original process continues executing.

To background a process
To background a process, type an & at the end of the command line. For example, the command
sleep waits a given number of seconds before continuing. Type
sleep 10
This will wait 10 seconds before returning the command prompt %. Until the command prompt is
returned, you can do nothing except wait.
To run sleep in the background, type
sleep 10 &
[1] 6259
The & runs the job in the background and returns the prompt straight away, allowing you do run
other programs while waiting for that one to finish. The first line in the above example is typed in
by the user; the next line, indicating job number and PID, is returned by the machine. The user is
be notified of a job number (numbered from 1) enclosed in square brackets, together with a PID
and is notified when a background process is finished. Backgrounding is useful for jobs which
will take a long time to complete.
Backgrounding a current foreground process
At the prompt, type
sleep 100
You can suspend the process running in the foreground by holding down the control key and
typing z (written as ^Z) Then to put it in the background, type
bg
Note: do not background programs that require user interaction e.g. elm

Listing suspended and background processes

When a process is running, backgrounded or suspended, it will be entered onto a list along with a
job number. To examine this list, type
jobs
An example of a job list could be
[1] Suspended sleep 100
[2] Running netscape
[3] Suspended asedit
To restart (foreground) a suspended processes, type
% fg %job_number
For example, to restart sleep 100, type
% fg %1
Typing fg with no job number foregrounds the last suspended process.

Killing a process
It is sometimes necessary to kill a process (for example, when an executing program is in an
infinite loop)
To kill a job running in the foreground, type ^C (control c). For example, run sleep 100 then kill
it with ^C

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For a suspended or background process, type

kill %job_number
For example, run sleep 100 & then type jobs to see its job number. If it is job number 4, type
kill %4
To check whether this has worked, examine the job list again to see if the process has been
removed.
Alternatively, processes can be killed by finding their process numbers (PIDs) and using kill
PID_number.

Run sleep 100 & again, then type

ps

PID TT S TIME COMMAND

20077 pts/5 S 0:05 sleep 100
21563 pts/5 T 0:00 netscape
21873 pts/5 S 0:25 asedit
To kill off the process sleep 100, type
kill 20077
and then type ps again to see if it has been removed from the list.
If a process refuses to be killed, uses the -9 option, i.e. type
kill -9 20077
Note: It is not possible to kill off other users’ processes

Summary
ls -lag list access rights for all files
chmod [options] file change access rights for named file
command & run command in background
^C kill the job running in the foreground
^Z suspend the job running in the foreground
bg background the suspended job
jobs list current jobs
fg %1 foreground job number 1
kill %1 kill job number 1
ps list current processes
kill 26152 kill process number 26152

UNIX Tutorial Seven

Other useful UNIX commands

Quota (optional)
All students are allocated a certain amount of disk space on the file system for their personal files,
usually about 5 Megabyes (equivalent to 4 floppy disks worth). If you go "over-quota", you are
given 7 days to remove excess files.

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To check your current quota and how much of it you have used, type
quota -v

df
The df command reports on the space left on the file system. For example, to find out how much
space is left on the fileserver, type
df .

du
The du command outputs the number of kilobyes used by each subdirectory. Useful if you have
gone over quota and you want to find out which directory has the most files. In your home-
directory, type
du

compress
This reduces the size of a file, thus freeing valuable disk space. For example, type
ls -l myfile
and note the size of the file. Then to compress myfile, type
compress myfile
This will compress the file and place it in a file called myfile.Z
To see the change in size, type ls -l again.

To uncomress the file, use the uncompress command.

uncompress myfile.Z

file
file classifies the named files according to the type of data they contain, for example ascii (text),
pictures, compressed data, etc.. To report on all files in your home directory, type
file *

? file - identifies the "type" of file. The command syntax is:

?
? file filename

For example:

file * - reports all files in current

directory and their types. The
output might appear as shown below:

[Link]: ascii text

bin: directory
[Link]: English text
bggen: executable or object modu
le not stripped
bmbinc: commands text

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machines.sp1: [nt]roff, tbl, or eqn input text

man2html: executable or object module not stripped
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? find - finds files. The syntax of this command is:

?
? find pathname -name filename -print

The pathname defines the directory to start from. Each subdirectory of this directory will
be searched.
The -print option must be used to display results.

You can define the filename using wildcards. If these are used, the filename must be
placed in 'quotes'.

find . -name mtg_jan92 -print - looks for the file

mtg_jan92 in current
directory
find ~/ -name README -print - looks for files called
README throughout your
home directory
find . -name '*.fm' -print - looks for all files with
.fm suffix in current
directory
find /usr/local -name gnu -type d -print
- looks for a directory
called gnu within the
/usr/local directory

? diff - comparing two files or directories. Indicates which lines need be added (a), deleted
(d) or changed (c). Lines in file1 are identified with a (<) symbol: lines in file2 with a (>)
symbol
?
? diff file1 file2 - compares file1 to file2
? diff -iw file1 file2 - compares two files ignoring
? letter case and spaces
? diff dir1 dir2 - compares two directories
? showing files which are
? unique to each and also,
? line by line differences
? between any files in common.

For example, if file1 and file2 are:

John erpl08@ed John erpl08@ed

Joe CZT@[Link] Joe CZT@[Link]
Kim ks@[Link] Jean JRS@[Link]
Keith keith@festival Jim jim@frolix8
Kim ks@[Link]
Keith keith@festival

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Dr. Zulfikar H. A. Kassam ZK-UNIX [Link]

Using the diff command: diff file1 file2 Yields the output:

2a3,4
> Jean JRS@[Link]
> Jim jim@frolix8

Which means that to make these files match you need to add (a) lines 3 and 4 (3,4) of
file2 (>) after line 2 in file1.
? sdiff - similar to diff, but displays each line of the two files side by side, making it easier
for you to see the differences between them

Lines that are different are shown with a | symbol. Lines unique to file1 are identified by
a < symbol; lines unique to file2 with a > symbol. Identical lines appear next to each
other. The option -w 80 is used to set the width of the output from the command to 80
characters. The default is 130 characters.

sdiff -w 80 file1 file2

Mike erpl08@ed | John erpl08@ed
Joe CZT@[Link] Joe CZT@[Link]
> Jean JRS@[Link]
> Jim jim@frolix8
Kim ks@[Link] Kim ks@[Link]
Sam [Link]@aston <
Keith keith@festival Keith keith@festival

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