Orientation for fresh VDTT Students

Introduction to UNIX
July 28, 2001

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 1

Anup Gangwar

Overview
Prerequisites and goals of this course
Differences between UNIX and Windows
Overview of unices
Basic UNIX commands and utilities
Lunch Break
File editors in UNIX
Programming and Shell Scripting
Document formatting using UNIX
References and further study
Thank You

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 2

Prerequisites and Goals

What you should know
Basic familiarity with computers
Working Knowledge of atleast one operating system
A will to learn

What you will know

This is not a complete UNIX tutorial
Dont try to learn the whole UNIX in one day
How to do the most common set of tasks with UNIX
Self-Help is the best help
Pointers for further information

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 3

Differences: UNIX and Windows

The UNIX and Windows philosophies

Client-Server model of Computation
Multi-User and Multi-Tasking. Login?
Concept of the Kernel and User Shell
Concept of file ownership and groups
GUI on UNIX and X windows
Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 4

UNIX is the most used OS in scientific and industrial community

Instead of avoiding UNIX take it heads on
Learning UNIX now will help you save precious time later on

Overview of Unices-1

The ?original? UNIX

The AT&T SVR and BSD
Others: HP-UX, Solaris, Linux, AIX, IRIX etc.
Why are there so many unices? Vendor Wars!
How do I understand all of them? POSIX!
Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 5

Learn the common set of commands for all the unices

Linux utilities will contain enhancements not found in others
Try to clear trivial doubts like command syntax yourself

Overview of Unices-2
HP-UX
Processors: HP PA-RISC and Intel Itanium
Vendors: HP
Markets: High End Servers and Workstations

Solaris/SunOS

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 6

Processors: Sun Ultra Sparc

Vendors: Sun Microsystems
Markets: All ranges of Servers and Workstations

Overview of Unices-3
Linux/GNU Systems
Processors: Intel 386 and up, Sun Ultra Sparc, IBM
PowerPC etc.
Vendors: Free/GNU GPL
Markets: Low End Servers and Workstations

AIX (Advanced UNIX)

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 7

Processors: IBM Power PC

Vendors: IBM
Markets: All ranges of Servers and Workstations

Overview of Unices-4
IRIX
Processors: MIPS
Vendors: SGI (Silicon Graphics International)
Markets: High End Graphics Servers and Workstations

Others

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 8

BeOS, FreeBSD etc.

RTOSs: PSoS, QNX, RTEMS, ?RTLinux? etc.

What we have
Philips VLSI Design Lab
HP Server running HP-UX
Sun Workstation
Linux Workstations

VDTT Lab
Linux Workstations
Windows NT Workstations

New VLSI Lab

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 9

Sun Workstations
Windows NT Workstations

Basic UNIX Commands and Utilities-1

Files and Directories

File Types: Windows and UNIX

File and Directory creation (Editors, mkdir, ln etc.)
Listing contents of a directory (ls)
File and Directory deletion (rmdir, rm etc.)
File and Directory permissions (chmod)
File and Directory ownership (chown, chgrp)
Organizing your work in directories (mv)

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 10

UNIX doesnt have a recycle bin!

Try not to make the mistake of rm -rf * command

Basic UNIX Commands and Utilities-2

Managing your account

What is meant by managing your account?

Concept of setup files
Why are there so many different Shells?
Environment variables
.bashrc and .cshrc files
Customizing your environment with .bashrc and .cshrc files
Example: The TERM environment variable and stty
Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 11

Try an environment variable on command-line first

Always set the PATH variable properly

Basic UNIX Commands and Utilities-3

Remote process execution
Why do we need remote process execution?
Telnet and rlogin
Remote execution of graphics programs
X-Security, granting permissions and colormap
The DISPLAY environment variable

dot-rhosts (.rhosts), xon

Moving files between computers: FTP (?anonymous? FTP login)
Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 12

Graphics performance suffers in remote graphics execution

xhost+ is the worst thing to do!
Ncftp is a better ftp client than the vanilla default UNIX ftp

Basic UNIX Commands and Utilities-4

Taking printouts

Concept of network and local printers

Printer languages: Postscript and PCL
GhostView and Acroread programs
Spooling, Deleting and Checking a printer job
Duplex printing and mpage

Taking backups
Tarring, zipping, gzipping and compressing
Comparison with winzip and common filename extensions

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 13

Do not issue the command tar -cvf <file-name> *

Acroread just might be a better program to open pdf files

Basic UNIX Commands and Utilities-5

Miscellaneous stuff

Forcing a process in background (&, fg, bg)

Setting aliases
Online manual pages, man
Concept of NIS and NFS
Changing password, passwd (?yppasswd?)
Searching for patterns, grep and regular expressions

Working with files with special characters in names

The file utility
finger, who and rwho
ps and kill
Mail and mail clients, netscape, pine, emacs and mail
startx, .Xclients and .xinitrc files

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 14

Instead of asking someone try man -k

It is a good practice to stick to one shell (csh is available on all)

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 15

Lunch Break

Editors in UNIX-1
What all is available, Vi, Emacs, Pico, Joe?, Nedit?
Vi: The king of all editors? Tutorial?
Why learn vi?
Getting in and out?
Basic keys for editing
Moving around, deleting, joining lines
Repeating commands
Search and replace

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 16

Vim is not Vi
Learn the keypad scroll key combinations instead of arrow keys
Vi is fast, try to make the best use of its capabilities

Editors in UNIX-2
Emacs: Much more than an editor?
Why learn Emacs? History, Tutorial
Getting in and out?
Basic keys for editing

Moving around, deleting a line

Search and replace
Formatted text, postscript spooling
mail in emacs

Syntax highlighting and templates

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 17

Emacs recognizes 20+ languages out of the box

Emacs is slow
Emacs is not available by default on all unices

Editors in UNIX-3
Pico: Is there really a need?
Pico and Pine
Editor Keys

Joe?, Nedit?
Keys similar to Norton Editor
Nedit has some features similar to Emacs

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 18

Dont fall for Pico or Nedit

Learn Vi and Emacs if you really want to get into UNIX
In the end it is a matter of choice

Programming on UNIX-1

Is programming on UNIX tough? What all is available?

Concept of IDE and differences with TurboC++
Compilers, Linkers, Debuggers and front-ends
Managing big projects: make and comparison with TC
project file
Example of a simple makefile
GUI development on UNIX
Java
Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 19

UNIX is a programmers paradise

Programming on UNIX-2
Gcc, The GNU C/C++ compiler
Simplest possible way to use: gcc <file-name>
Common options

output filename: -o
compile only: -c
Warnings: -Wall
optimizations: -O{1,2,3,4}
Debug: -g
Linking: -l<library-name>

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 20

Not every UNIX systems will have gcc

Turning on optimization makes the compilation slow
Debugging and optimizing donot go together

Programming on UNIX-3
Ld, The Linker

What exactly are libraries?

Shared and static libraries
Is there a need to call Ld explicitly?
Passing options to Ld from gcc

The -l option
The -L option
The LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable
The LD_RUN_PATH environment variable

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 21

Always check the Ld on the system, HP-UX doesnt use GNU Ld

Environment variables are different with non GNU Ld

Programming on UNIX-4
Gdb, The GNU C/C++ debugger
Why is a debugger needed?
gdb and ?core? File
Common commands
list
run, break, resume
backtrace and where

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 22

Using gdb directly might be tedious

Try the various front-ends to gdb: emacs, xxgdb, mxgdb etc.
Not every system will have gdb, you just might have to use ?dbx?

Programming on UNIX-5
Gmake or GNU make
What is the need for a Makefile?

Dependencies
Targets in a makefile
Patterns in makefile
Automatic variables in a makefile
Pattern substitution
Common target names: all, clean, docs

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 23

Never forget the TAB

Make is language independent!

Programming on UNIX-6
Example of a makefile
CC=gcc

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 24

COPTS= -g -Wall
TARGET=run.x
SRCS=hello.c junk.c
OBJS=$(SRCS:.c=.o)
all:$(OBJS)
$(CC) $(COPTS) $(OBJS) -o $(TARGET)
clean:
rm -f $(OBJS) core
%.o:%.c
$(CC) $(COPTS) -c $<

Programming on UNIX-7
GUI in UNIX?

Differences with TurboC++

Vanilla X windows programming, why not?
TCL/Tk
Widget libraries
Motif
GTK
QT, etc.

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 25

Always provide a command line interface to your programs

Using a GUI is slow

Programming on UNIX-8
Java
What is really different with the windows version?
Is Jfc, Java2D, Java3D available?
IDEs for Java over UNIX?

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 26

Dont try to use a %.class dependency with make

If you run Java from a server, graphics would be slow

Introduction to Shell Programming-1

What is the need for shell programming?

Bourne shell (sh, ksh, zsh and bash)
c shell (csh, tcsh)
Examples of shell programming
Moving all a.{i}.txt files to a.{i+1}.txt
Cleaning up your directory at the end of a day

Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 27

Perl just might be a better option

Dont forget ?sed? and ?awk?

Introduction to Shell Programming-2

Moving files script
#!/bin/sh -f
FILE_LIST=`ls | grep "\.[0-9]\." `
for CURR_FILE in $FILE_LIST; do
FIRST_NM=`echo $CURR_FILE | cut -d'.' -f1`
NUM=`echo $CURR_FILE | cut -d'.' -f2 `
SECOND_NM=`echo $CURR_FILE | cut -d'.' -f3`
NUM_PLUS=`expr $NUM + 1 `
mv -i $CURR_FILE $FIRST_NM.$NUM_PLUS.$SECOND_NM

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 28

done

Introduction to Shell Programming-3

Cleanup directory script

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 29

#!/bin/csh -f
# Assume that ps, pdf etc. directories are present
set FILE_LIST=`ls`
foreach CURR_FILE ( $FILE_LIST )
set TST=`echo $CURR_FILE | grep \.pdf\$ `
if( $TST != "" ) then
mv $CURR_FILE pdf
endif
set TST=`echo $CURR_FILE | grep \.ps\$ `
if( $TST != "" ) then
mv $CURR_FILE ps
endif
end

Text formatting using UNIX-1

What is the need for text formatting?

WYSWYG or NOT?
LaTeX & Emacs PS renderer
LaTeX WYSWYG front-end Lyx
Other text formatters: ?troff?
How to make Presentations? Slides?
Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 30

PowerPoint is still the best software for making presentations

It is easy to convert PowerPoint slides to html

Text formatting using UNIX-2

LaTeX
origin: LaTeX and TeX
usage
LaTeX tutorials and manuals
A not so short introduction to LaTeX
The LaTeX manual
LaTeX by Lesslie Lamport

Lyx a WYSWIG interface to LaTeX

Emacs ps-renderer and troff
Tips:

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 31

For small formatted text Emacs is still the best

Before wrapping up

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 32

Any questions/doubts which you would like to clarify?

Wrapping up
Self help is the best help!
The UNIX man pages. ?Manual sections?
Using man, whatis etc.
Experiment. You can never kill the system.

Links

http://www.gnu.org, for GNU tools and manuals

http://sunsite.unc.edu, worlds largest collection of free software
http://upavan.cse.iitd.ernet.in, Philips Lab. internal page
http://poorvi.cse.iitd.ernet.in/local, Intel cluster archives

Books
Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 33

The UNIX programming environment, Kernighan & Pike

Embedded Systems Group

IIT Delhi

Slide 34

Thank You