Introduction to Shells

Boris Veytsman June 28, 2001

This document contains lecture notes for informal Unix seminar for ITT AES employees (Reston, VA). No information in this document is either endorsed by or attributable to ITT. This document contains no ITT Privileged/Proprietary Information.

What Is A Shell?
It is easier to port a shell than a shell script. Larry Wall

Interpreter between you and the computer.

$ ls

shell

Everything you type is taken care of by shell!

Two Ways to Use Shell

There are two ways to write error-free programs; only the third one works.

Interactive: you write something, and the system executes it immediately. You need: 1. Good process control mechanism 2. Good history and command line editing facilities Batch: you write a script, and the system executes it. You need: 1. Good programming facilities (language!) 2. Good redirection facilities

The Shells You Choose

A UNIX saleslady, Lenore, Enjoys work, but she likes the beach more. She found a good way To combine work and play: She sells C shells by the seashore.

See [Link] Bourne shell: /bin/sh. Very good language, great redirection. Bad for interactive use. 90% scripts use /bin/sh C shell: /bin/csh. Tried to mimic C language. Badly. Most implementation buggy. Others are brain dead. Better for interactive use. No good for scripts.
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New C shell: /bin/tcsh. Bug xed, new features added. Unfortunately, non standard. Korn shell: /bin/ksh. Tried to combine Bourne and C shells. Bournelike syntax, C-like interactive features. Unfortunately, not free and not bundled with commercial systems. Bourne Again Shell: /bin/bash. A free gift from GNU. Compatible with /bin/sh, but with nice features from C shell, /bin/ksh and other shells. Good for anything. Experimental shells: /bin/zsh, /bin/rc & others.

1. If you are a novice or have time to learnuse bash 2. Never write scripts in cshsee the famous paper by Tom Christiansen, [Link] Do yourself a favor, and if you have to write a shell script, do it in the Bourne shell. 3. If you do not have bash, try ksh 4. If you are a csh veteran, try tcsh. Still, you might benet form sh or bash

Command Line History

We learn from history that we do not learn from history. Georg Hegel

Interactive work requires reuse of commands. This is called command line history.

Setting Up
Setting the number of commands to remember
HISTSIZE=100 # bash, ksh set history=100 # csh

Remembering the history from session to session: Automatic in bash & ksh In csh use
set savehist=100

Repeating the Last Command

!! repeats the last command
boris@reston-0491:~$ pwd /home/boris boris@reston-0491:~$ !! pwd /home/boris

You can add something to the command

boris@reston-0491:~$ !! > [Link]

!letters repeats the last command starting with letters

boris@reston-0491:~/itt/unix/6_shellsintro$ !pdf pdflatex 6_shellsintro.tex

!?letters ? repeats the last command containing letters

boris@reston-0491:~/itt/unix/6_shellsintro$ !?shells? pdflatex 6_shellsintro.tex

history gives the list of commands with numbers !number repeats the command with this number
boris@reston-0491:~$ history |tail 497 w 498 ls 499 exit 500 pwd 501 pwd 502 history 503 history |head 504 history |tail boris@reston-0491:~$ !500 pwd /home/boris

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A real-life example:
boris@reston-0491:~$ history |grep gsfc 118 ssh [Link] 506 history |grep gsfc boris@reston-0491:~$ !118 ssh [Link]

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Editing the Last Command

Switch :p prints command for editing. The command becomes the last in history!
boris@reston-0491:~$ !pdf:p pdflatex 6_shellsintro.tex boris@reston-0491:~$

Carets . . . . . . substitutes text

boris@reston-0491:~$ ls *junk* junk boris@reston-0491:~$ ^ls^rm rm *junk* boris@reston-0491:~$

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Switch :s same as carets, but more exible:

boris@reston-0491:~$ ls *junk* junk boris@reston-0491:~$ !:s/ls/rm/ rm *junk*

It can be sophisticated. . .
boris@reston-0491:~$ pdflatex 6_shellsintro.tex ... boris@reston-0491:~$ !pdf:s/pdflatex/ls -ls/ ls -ls 6_shellsintro.tex 12 -rw-r--r-- 1 boris users 8763 Jun 26 15:15 6_shellsintro.tex

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Some Other Odds and Ends

!$ repeat the last word on the previous line
boris@reston-0491:~$ mkdir junk boris@reston-0491:~$ mv jnk01 !$ mv jnk01 junk boris@reston-0491:~$ cd !$ cd junk boris@reston-0491:~/junk$

!:0 repeat the command name !* repeat all arguments !-5 repeat last 5 commands
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Job Control
The dierence between a career and a job is about 20 hours a week.

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Background and Foreground

A command you started normally is attached to the tty (foreground ):
boris@reston-0491:~$ xeyes

Ampersand puts it into background :

boris@reston-0491:~$ xeyes & [1] 4076

We started job #1, process #4076

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A foreground job can be killed

boris@reston-0491:~$ xeyes Ctrl-c boris@reston-0491:~$

It stopped and put into background

boris@reston-0491:~$ xeyes Ctrl-z [2]+ Stopped boris@reston-0491:~$ bg [2]+ xeyes & boris@reston-0491:~$

xeyes

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Getting List of Jobs and Processes

boris@reston-0491:~$ jobs [1] Running xeyes & [2]- Running xbiff & [3]+ Running oclock & boris@reston-0491:~$ ps PID TTY TIME CMD 4092 pts/0 [Link] bash 4093 pts/0 [Link] xeyes 4094 pts/0 [Link] xbiff 4095 pts/0 [Link] oclock 4096 pts/0 [Link] ps boris@reston-0491:~$

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We can obtain list of all processes: SysV: ps -ef BSD: ps -aux

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Killing Jobs and Processes

boris@reston-0491:~$ jobs [1] Running xeyes & [2]- Running xbiff & boris@reston-0491:~$ ps PID TTY TIME CMD 4092 pts/0 [Link] bash 4093 pts/0 [Link] xeyes 4094 pts/0 [Link] xbiff 4096 pts/0 [Link] ps boris@reston-0491:~$ kill %1 [1] Terminated xeyes boris@reston-0491:~$ kill 4094 [2]- Terminated xbiff boris@reston-0491:~$

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A Real Life Example: Run Away Netscape

boris@reston-0491:~$ ps aux |grep netscape boris 9607 0.0 10.6 34488 26988 ? \ S Jun25 0:57 /usr/lib/netscape/477/communicator\ /[Link] [Link] boris@reston-0491:~$ kill 9607 boris@reston-0491:~$

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Ways to Kill. . .
To send a signal to a program:
kill -HUP %1 kill -1 %1

Some common signals Signal HUP KILL TERM STOP CONT Value 1 9 15 19 18 Meaning Hangup. Often causes reloading Kills politely Kills impolitely Suspends Allows to continue
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Input, Output and nohup

nohup rm -fr / &

Command, started form command line, use your keyboard as input and your screen as output. What if you put the command into background? 1. If it needs input, it stops 2. Output is still your screen

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boris@reston-0491:~$ telnet kenny Trying [Link]... Connected to [Link]. Escape character is ^]. SunOS 5.6 (kenny) login:

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Does not work in background:

boris@reston-0491:~$ telnet kenny & [1] 4414 boris@reston-0491:~$ Trying [Link]... Connected to [Link]. Escape character is ^].

[1]+ Stopped boris@reston-0491:~$

telnet kenny

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Sometimes we can wake it up:

boris@reston-0491:~$ fg telnet kenny SunOS 5.6 (kenny) login:

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What happens to our background jobs if we log out? 1. The program receives the HUP signal (from hangup. Remember old modems?) 2. If it tries to write to a screen, it dies What if we want to have it overnight?
nohup myprogram &

1. The HUP signal is not sent 2. Output goes to the le [Link]

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