LECTURE ONE

UNIX / LINUX Tutorial

Unix is a computer Operating System which is capable of handling activities from
multiple users at the same time. The development of Unix started around 1969 at
AT&T Bell Labs by Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie. This tutorial gives a very
good understanding on Unix.

Audience
This tutorial has been prepared for the beginners to help them understand the
basics to advanced concepts covering Unix commands, Unix shell scripting and
various utilities.

Prerequisites
We assume you have adequate exposure to Operating Systems and their
functionalities. A basic understanding on various computer concepts will also help
you in understanding the various exercises given in this tutorial.

Execute Unix Shell Programs

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Unix / Linux - Getting Started

What is Unix ?
The Unix operating system is a set of programs that act as a link between
the computer and the user.

The computer programs that allocate the system resources and coordinate
all the details of the computer's internals is called the operating system or
the kernel.

Users communicate with the kernel through a program known as the shell.
The shell is a command line interpreter; it translates commands entered by
the user and converts them into a language that is understood by the
kernel.

 Unix was originally developed in 1969 by a group of AT&T employees Ken

Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna at Bell Labs.
 There are various Unix variants available in the market. Solaris Unix, AIX, HP
Unix and BSD are a few examples. Linux is also a flavor of Unix which is freely
available.
 Several people can use a Unix computer at the same time; hence Unix is called
a multiuser system.
 A user can also run multiple programs at the same time; hence Unix is a
multitasking environment.

Unix Architecture
Here is a basic block diagram of a Unix system −

The main concept that unites all the versions of Unix is the following four
basics −

 Kernel − The kernel is the heart of the operating system. It interacts with the
hardware and most of the tasks like memory management, task scheduling and
file management.
 Shell − The shell is the utility that processes your requests. When you type in a
command at your terminal, the shell interprets the command and calls the
 program that you want. The shell uses standard syntax for all commands. C
Shell, Bourne Shell and Korn Shell are the most famous shells which are
available with most of the Unix variants.
 Commands and Utilities − There are various commands and utilities which
you can make use of in your day to day activities. cp, mv, cat and grep, etc.
are few examples of commands and utilities. There are over 250 standard
commands plus numerous others provided through 3 rd party software. All the
commands come along with various options.
 Files and Directories − All the data of Unix is organized into files. All files are
then organized into directories. These directories are further organized into a
tree-like structure called the filesystem.

System Bootup
If you have a computer which has the Unix operating system installed in it,
then you simply need to turn on the system to make it live.

As soon as you turn on the system, it starts booting up and finally it

prompts you to log into the system, which is an activity to log into the
system and use it for your day-to-day activities.

Login Unix
When you first connect to a Unix system, you usually see a prompt such as
the following −
login:

To log in
 Have your userid (user identification) and password ready. Contact your system
administrator if you don't have these yet.
 Type your userid at the login prompt, then press ENTER. Your userid is case-
sensitive, so be sure you type it exactly as your system administrator has
instructed.
 Type your password at the password prompt, then press ENTER. Your password
is also case-sensitive.
 If you provide the correct userid and password, then you will be allowed to enter
into the system. Read the information and messages that comes up on the
screen, which is as follows.

login : amrood
amrood's password:
Last login: Sun Jun 14 09:32:32 2009 from 62.61.164.73
$

You will be provided with a command prompt (sometime called

the $ prompt ) where you type all your commands. For example, to check
calendar, you need to type the cal command as follows −
$ cal
June 2009
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
1 2 3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13
14 15 16 17 18 19 20
21 22 23 24 25 26 27
28 29 30

Change Password
All Unix systems require passwords to help ensure that your files and data
remain your own and that the system itself is secure from hackers and
crackers. Following are the steps to change your password −

Step 1 − To start, type password at the command prompt as shown below.

Step 2 − Enter your old password, the one you're currently using.

Step 3 − Type in your new password. Always keep your password complex
enough so that nobody can guess it. But make sure, you remember it.

Step 4 − You must verify the password by typing it again.

$ passwd
Changing password for amrood
(current) Unix password:******
New UNIX password:*******
Retype new UNIX password:*******
passwd: all authentication tokens updated successfully

Note − We have added asterisk (*) here just to show the location where
you need to enter the current and new passwords otherwise at your
system. It does not show you any character when you type.
Listing Directories and Files
All data in Unix is organized into files. All files are organized into directories.
These directories are organized into a tree-like structure called the
filesystem.

You can use the ls command to list out all the files or directories available
in a directory. Following is the example of using ls command with -l option.
$ ls -l
total 19621
drwxrwxr-x 2 amrood amrood 4096 Dec 25 09:59 uml
-rw-rw-r-- 1 amrood amrood 5341 Dec 25 08:38 uml.jpg
drwxr-xr-x 2 amrood amrood 4096 Feb 15 2006 univ
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Dec 9 2007 urlspedia
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 276480 Dec 9 2007 urlspedia.tar
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Nov 25 2007 usr
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 3192 Nov 25 2007 webthumb.php
-rw-rw-r-- 1 amrood amrood 20480 Nov 25 2007 webthumb.tar
-rw-rw-r-- 1 amrood amrood 5654 Aug 9 2007 yourfile.mid
-rw-rw-r-- 1 amrood amrood 166255 Aug 9 2007 yourfile.swf

Here entries starting with d..... represent directories. For example, uml,
univ and urlspedia are directories and rest of the entries are files.

Who Are You?

While you're logged into the system, you might be willing to know : Who
am I?

The easiest way to find out "who you are" is to enter

the whoami command −
$ whoami
amrood

Try it on your system. This command lists the account name associated
with the current login. You can try who am i command as well to get
information about yourself.

Who is Logged in?

Sometime you might be interested to know who is logged in to the
computer at the same time.

There are three commands available to get you this information, based on
how much you wish to know about the other users: users, who, and w.
$ users
amrood bablu qadir

$ who
amrood ttyp0 Oct 8 14:10 (limbo)
bablu ttyp2 Oct 4 09:08 (calliope)
qadir ttyp4 Oct 8 12:09 (dent)

Try the w command on your system to check the output. This lists down
information associated with the users logged in the system.

Logging Out
When you finish your session, you need to log out of the system. This is to
ensure that nobody else accesses your files.

To log out

 Just type the logout command at the command prompt, and the system will
clean up everything and break the connection.

System Shutdown
The most consistent way to shut down a Unix system properly via the
command line is to use one of the following commands −

Sr.No Command & Description

.

1 halt

Brings the system down immediately

2 init 0

Powers off the system using predefined scripts to synchronize and clean
up the system prior to shutting down

3 init 6

Reboots the system by shutting it down completely and then restarting it

4 poweroff
 Shuts down the system by powering off

5 reboot

Reboots the system

6
shutdown

Shuts down the system

You typically need to be the super user or root (the most privileged account
on a Unix system) to shut down the system. However, on some standalone
or personally-owned Unix boxes, an administrative user and sometimes
regular users can do so.