Introduction to Unix

UNIX/UNIX OPERATING SYSTEM

Introduction to Unix
History of UNIX What is Unix Unix Distributions Unix OS Structure Unix File System Unix Directories, Files and Inodes Users, Groups and Permissions

Introduction to Unix

UNIX
Unix is a multi-user, multi-tasking operating system. You can have many users logged into a system simultaneously, each running many programs. It's the kernel's job to keep each process and user separate and to regulate access to system hardware, including cpu, memory, disk and other I/O devices.

Introduction to Unix

HISTORY OF UNIX
First Version was created in Bell Labs in 1969. Some of the Bell Labs programmers who had worked on this project, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Rudd Canaday, and Doug McIlroy designed and implemented the first version of the Unix File System on a PDP-7 along with a few utilities. It was given the name UNIX by Brian Kernighan. 00:00:00 Hours, Jan 1, 1970 is time zero for UNIX. It is also called as epoch.

Introduction to Unix

HISTORY OF UNIX
1973 Unix is re-written mostly in C, a new language developed by Dennis Ritchie. Being written in this high-level language greatly decreased the effort needed to port it to new machines.

Introduction to Unix

HISTORY OF UNIX
1977 There were about 500 Unix sites world-wide. 1980 BSD 4.1 (Berkeley Software Development) 1983 SunOS, BSD 4.2, System V

1988 AT&T and Sun Microsystems jointly develop System V Release 4 (SVR4). This later developed into UnixWare and Solaris 2.
1991 Unix was originated.

Introduction to Unix

WHAT IS UNIX
Unix is a free Unix-type operating system originally created by Linus Torvalds with the assistance of developers around the world. It originated in 1991 as a personal project of Linus Torvalds, a Finnish graduate student. The Kernel version 1.0 was released in 1994 and today the most recent stable version is 2.6.9

Developed under the GNU General Public License , the source code for Unix is freely available to everyone.

Introduction to Unix

UNIX DISTRIBUTIONS
Mandrake: http://www.mandrakesoft.com/

RedHat: http://www.redhat.com/
Fedora: http://fedora.redhat.com/ SuSE/Novell: http://www.suse.com/

Debian: http://www.debian.org/
Red Hat Enterprise Unix is a Enterprise targeted Operating System. It based on mature Open Source technology and available at a cost with one year Red Hat Network subscription for upgrade and support contract.

Introduction to Unix

UNIX STRUCTURE

Introduction to Unix

UNIX FILE SYSTEM

Introduction to Unix

FILE SYSTEM
The Unix file system looks like an inverted tree structure. You start with the root directory, denoted by /, at the top and work down through sub-directories underneath it.

Introduction to Unix

FILE SYSTEM
Each node is either a file or a directory of files, where the latter can contain other files and directories. You specify a file or directory by its path name, either the full, or absolute, path name or the one relative to a location. The full path name starts with the root, /, and follows the branches of the file system, each separated by /, until you reach the desired file, e.g.: /home/condron/source/xntp

Introduction to Unix

FILE SYSTEM
A relative path name specifies the path relative to another, usually the current working directory that you are at. Two special directories : . the current directory .. the parent of the current directory So if I'm at /home/frank and wish to specify the path above in a relative fashion I could use:

../condron/source/xntp
This indicates that I should first go up one directory level, then come down through the condron directory, followed by the source directory and then to xntp.

Introduction to Unix

STRUCTURE OF STANDARD DIRECTORIES IN UNIX/UNIX

/ The ancestor of all directories on the system; all other directories are subdirectories of this directory, either directly or through other subdirectories.

/bin Essential tools and other programs (or binaries).

/dev Files representing the system's various hardware devices. For example, you use the file `/dev/cdrom' to access the CDROM drive. /etc Miscellaneous system configuration files, startup files, etc.

Introduction to Unix

STRUCTURE OF STANDARD DIRECTORIES IN UNIX/UNIX

/home The home directories for all of the system's users. /lib Essential system library files used by tools in `/bin'. /proc Files that give information about current system processes. /root The superuser's home directory, whose username is root. (In the past, the home directory for the superuser was simply `/'; later, `/root' was adopted for this purpose to reduce clutter in `/'.)

Introduction to Unix

STRUCTURE OF STANDARD DIRECTORIES IN UNIX/UNIX

/sbin Essential system administrator tools, or system binaries. /tmp Temporary files.

/usr Subdirectories with files related to user tools and applications.

Introduction to Unix

DIRECTORIES, FILES AND INODES

Every directory and file is listed in its parent directory. In the case of the root directory, that parent is itself. A directory is a file that contains a table listing the files contained within it, giving file names to the inode numbers in the list. The information about all the files and directories is maintained in INODE TABLE An Inode (Index Nodes) is an entry in the table containing information about a file (metadata) including file permissions, UID, GID, size, time stamp, pointers to files data blocks on the disk etc.

Introduction to Unix

USERS, GROUPS AND ACCESS PERMISSIONS

In UNIX/Unix, there is a concept of user and an associated group The system determines whether or not a user or group can access a file or program based on the permissions assigned to them. Apart from all the users, there is a special user called Super User or the root which has permission to access any file and directory

Introduction to Unix

ACCESS PERMISSIONS
There are three permissions for any file, directory or application program. The following lists the symbols used to denote each, along with a brief description: r Indicates that a given category of user can read a file.

w Indicates that a given category of user can write to a file.

x Indicates that a given category of user can execute the file.

Introduction to Unix

ACCESS PERMISSIONS
Each of the three permissions are assigned to three defined categories of users. The categories are: owner The owner of the file or application. group The group that owns the application. others All users with access to the system.

file

or

Introduction to Unix

ACCESS PERMISSIONS
One can easily view the permissions for a file by invoking a long format listing using the command ls -l. For instance, if the user juan creates an executable file named test, the output of the command ls -l test would look like this:

-rwxrwxr-x 1 juan student 0 Sep 26 12:25 test

Introduction to Unix

ACCESS PERMISSIONS
The permissions for this file are listed are listed at the start of the line, starting with rwx. This first set of symbols define owner access. The next set of rwx symbols define group access The last set of symbols defining access permitted for all other users.

Introduction to Unix

ACCESS PERMISSIONS
This listing indicates that the file is readable, writable, and executable by the user who owns the file (user juan) as well as the group owning the file (which is a group named student).

The file is also world-readable executable, but not world-writable.

and

world-

Introduction to Unix

LISTING THE CONTENT OF A DIRECTORY

ls is used to list the contents of a directory. If the command ls is written with parameter l then the command lists contents of the working directory with details. Example: $ ls l

Introduction to Unix

MOVING IN DIRECTORIES
cd try_it Changes the directory to try_it pwd Prints present working directory (e.g. /home/smith/try_it) cd .. Move to superior directory pwd : Prints /home/smith cd /home The absolute path pwd : Prints /home cd The system is returned to the user home directory pwd : Print /home/smith

MAKE DIRECTORY
The command mkdir my_dir makes new directory my_dir (the path is given relative) as a subdirectory of the current directory.

Introduction to Unix

REMOVE DIRECTORY
The command rmdir your_dir removes directory your_dir if it is empty.

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COPY FILE
The command cp file_1 file_2 copies file_1 to file_2. The both files must be in the same working directory. If they are in various directories, the path must be given.

Introduction to Unix

RENAME AND/OR MOVE THE FILE

The command mv file_1 file_2 moves file_1 to file_2

The both files directory.

must be in the same working

If they are in different directories, the path must be given. The file_1 is removed from the disk.

Introduction to Unix

REMOVE FILE
The command rm file_a removes the file_a from the system If you use wildcard. For example rm h*c you will remove all files beginning with h and ending with c which are in working directory. If you write rm * you will erase all files from your working directory.