3) Graded Lab Tasks

Note: The instructor can design graded lab activities according to the level of difficult and complexity
of the solved lab activities. The lab tasks assigned by the instructor should be evaluated in the same
lab.

Lab Task 1:
In GUI open the Libre Office writer tool create a document that contains information about your
favorite place. Try the following short- keys while formatting the document.

24
 Lab No. 02
Working with Navigation, and File & Directory Handing
Commands

Objective:
This lab will introduce the Directory and File related commands to you. We will start with the some
basic but important commands used to navigate through the Linux file system. Then we will discuss
Directory and File related commands. Finally, we will introduce the I/O redirection in Linux

Activity Outcomes:
On completion of this lab students will be able to:
 Navigation through Linux file system using CLI
 Working with directories in Linux using CLI
 Handling Files in Linux using CLI
 Using I/O redirection in Linux.

Instructor Notes
As pre-lab activity, read Chapter 1 to 6 from the book “The Linux Command Line”, William E. Shotts,
Jr.

1) Useful Concepts
Linux organizes its files in a hierarchical directory structure. The first directory in the file system is
called the root directory. The root directory contains files and subdirectories, which contain more files
and subdirectories and so on and so on. If we map out the files and directories in Linux, it would look
like an upside-down tree. At the top is the root directory, which is represented by a single slash (/).
Below that is a set of common directories in the Linux system, such as bin, dev, home, lib , and tmp , to
name a few. Each of those directories, as well as directories added to the root, can contain
subdirectories.

Navigation
The first thing we need to learn is how to navigate the file system on our Linux system. In this section
we will introduce the commands used for navigation in Linux system.

Print Working Directory

The directory we are standing in is called the current working directory. To display the current working
directory, we use the pwd (print working directory) command. When we first log in to our system our
current working directory is set to our home directory. Suppose, a user is created with name me on
machine Ubuntu; we display its current working directory as given below:

25
Listing The Contents Of A Directory
To list the files and directories in the current working directory, we use the ls command. Suppose, a
user me is in its home directory; to display the contents of current working directory can be displayed as
follows:

Besides the current working directory, we can specify the directory to list, like so:

Or even specify multiple directories. In this example we will list both the user's home directory
(symbolized by the “~” character) and the /usr directory:

The following options can also be used with ls command

Options Long-options Description

-a - - all List all files, even those with names
-d - - directory Ordinarily, if a directory is specified, ls will list the contents
of the directory, not the directory itself. Use this option in
conjunction with the -l option to see details about the
directory rather than its contents.
-h - - human- In long format listings, display file sizes in human readable
readable format rather than in bytes.
-r - - reeverse Display the results in reverse order. Normally,ls displays its
results in ascending alphabetical order.
-S - Sort results by file size.
-t Sort by modification time
-l Display results in long format.

Changing the Current Working Directory

To change your working directory, we use the cd command. To do this, type cd followed by the
pathname of the desired working directory. A pathname is the route we take along the branches of the
tree to get to the directory we want. Pathnames can be specified in one of two different ways; as
absolute pathnames or as relative pathnames. An absolute pathname begins with the root directory
26
and follows the tree branch by branch until the path to the desired directory or file is completed. On the
other hand a relative pathname starts from the working directory.
Suppose, a user me is in its home directory and we want to go into the Desktop directory, then it can be
done as follows:

The “..” operator is used to go to the parent directory of the current working directory. In continuation
of the above example, suppose we are in the Desktop directory and we have to go to the Documents
directory. To this task, first we will go the parent directory of Desktop (i.e. me, home directory of the
user) that contains the Documents directory then we will go into the Documents directory as given

below.

Working With Directories

In this Section, we introduce the most commonly used commands related to Directories.
Creating a Directory
In Linux, mkdir command is used to create a directory. We pass the directory name as the argument to
the mkdir command. Suppose, the user me is in its home directory and we want to create a new
directory named mydir in the Desktop directory. To do this, first we will change the current directory
to Desktop and then we will create the new directory. It is shown below:

Multiple directories can also be created using single mkdir command as given below:

Copying Files and Directories

cp command is used to copy files and directories. The syntax to use cp command is givenbelow:

Here, item1 and item2 may be files or directories. Similarly, multiple files can also be copiedusing

single cp command.
The common options that can be used with cp commands are:

Optio Long Option Explanation

n

27
 -a --archive Copy the files and directories and all of their attributes
-i --interactive Before overwriting an existing file, prompt the user for
confirmation
-r --recursive Recursively copy directories and their contents
-u -update When copying files from one directory to another, only copy files
that either don't exist, or are newer

Moving and Renaming Files and Directories

mv command is used to move files and directories. This command can also be used to rename files and
folder. To rename files and directories, we just perform the move operation with old name and new
name. As a result, the files or directory is created again with a new name. The syntax to use mv
command is given below:

Similarly, multiple files can be moved to a directory as given below

Common options, used with mv command are:

Option Long Option Explanation

-i --interactive Before overwriting an existing file, prompt the user for
confirmation
-u -update When moving files from one directory to another, only copy files
that either don't exist, or are newer

Removing and Files and Directories

To remove or delete a files and directories, rm command is used. Empty directories can also be deleted
using rmdir command but rm can be used for both empty and non-empty directories as well as for files.
The syntax is given below:

The common options, used with rm command are:

Option Long Option Explanation

-i --interactive Before deleting an existing file, prompt the user for confirmation.
-r --recursive Recursively delete directories.

Working with Files

28
In this section, we will introduce the file related commands.
Creating and Empty Text File
In Linux, there are several ways to create an empty text file. Most commonly the touch command is
used to create a file. We can create a file with name [Link] using touch command as given below:

Another, way to create a file in Linux is the cat command.

Similarly, a file can be created using some editors. For example, to create a file using gedit editor

Reading the File Contents

cat command can also be used to read the contents of a file.

Another option to view the contents of a text file is the use of less command.
Similarly, an editor can also be used to view the contents of a file.

Appending text files

cat command is also used to append a text file. Suppose we want to add some text at theend of

[Link]

Now, type the text and enter ctrl+d to copy the text to [Link].

Combining multiple text files

Using cat command, we can view the contents of multiple files. Suppose, we want to viewthe

contents of file1, file2 and file3, we can use the cat command as follows:

Similarly, we can redirect the output of multiple files to file instead of screen using cat command.
Suppose, in the above example we want to write the contents of file1, file2 and file3 into another file
file4 we can do this as shown below:
29
Determining File Type
To determine the type of a file we can use the file command. The syntax is given below:

Redirecting I/O
Many of the programs that we have used so far produce output of some kind. This output often consists
of two types. First, we have the program's results; that is, the data the program is designed to produce,
and second, we have status and error messages that tell us how the program is getting along. If we look
at a command like ls, we can see that it displaysits results and its error messages on the screen.
Keeping with the Unix theme of “everything is a file,” programs such as ls actually send their results to
a special file called standard output (often expressed as stdout) and their status messages to another file
called standard error (stderr). By default, both standard output andstandard error are linked to the screen
and not saved into a disk file. In addition, many programs take input from a facility called standard
input (stdin) which is, by default, attached to the keyboard. I/O redirection allows us to change where
output goes and where input comes from. Normally, output goes to the screen and input comes from the
keyboard, but with I/O redirection, we can change that.
Redirecting Standard Output
I/O redirection allows us to write the output on another file instead of standard output i.e. screen. To do
this, we use the redirection operator i.e. <. For example, we want to write the output of ls command in a
text file [Link] instead of screen. This can be done as given below:
If we write the output of some other program to [Link] using > operator, its previous contents will

be overwritten. Now, if want to append the file instead of over-writing we can use the << operator.
Redirecting Standard input
Redirecting input enables us to take input from another file instead of standard input i.e. keyboard. We
have already discussed this in previous section while discussing cat command where we used the text
file as input instead of keyboard and wrote it to another file.
Pipelines
The ability of commands to read data from standard input and send to standard output is utilized by a
shell feature called pipelines. Using the pipe operator “|” (vertical bar), the standard output of one
command can be piped into the standard input of another

2) Solved Lab Activities

[Link] Allocated Time Level of Complexity CLO Mapping
1 15 Medium CLO-5
2 15 Medium CLO-5
3 15 Medium CLO-5

30
Activity 1:
In this activity, you are required to perform tasks given below:
 Display your current directory.
 Change to the /etc directory.
 Go to the parent directory of the current directory.
 Go to the root directory.
 List the contents of the root directory.
 List a long listing of the root directory.
 Stay where you are, and list the contents of /etc.
 Stay where you are, and list the contents of /bin and /sbin.
 Stay where you are, and list the contents of ~.
 List all the files (including hidden files) in your home directory.
 List the files in /boot in a human readable format.

Solution:
 pwd
 cd /etc
 cd ..
 cd /
 ls
 ls -l
 ls /etc
 ls /bin /sbin
 ls ~
 ls -al ~
 ls -lh /boot

Activity 2:
Perform the following tasks using Linux CLI
 Create a directory “mydir1” in Desktop Directory. Inside mydir1 create another directory
“mydir2”.
 Change your current directory to “mydir2” using absolute path
 Now, change you current directory to Documents using relative path
 Create mydir3 directory in Documents directory and go into it
 Now, change your current directory to mydir2 using relative path
Solution:
 cd /home/Ubuntu/Desktop (suppose the user name is ubuntu)
mkdir mydir1
cd mydir1
mkdir mydir2
 cd /home/ubuntu/Desktop/mydir1/mydir2
 cd ../../../Desktop
 mkdir mydir3
cd mydir3
 cd ../../Desktop/mydir1/mydir2

31