A Small UNIX Tutorial

By CGS3063 staff
 What’s UNIX?

 An operating system claimed to be

“standard” “from microcomputers to
supercomputers”
 Invented by AT&T Bell Labs in late 60’s
 Currently there are different versions of
UNIX such as SunOS, Linux, DEC OSF/1,
AIX, HP-UX 10, Solaris, IRIX, SCO UNIX,
etc.
 Why we need UNIX?

 For this class you need to work from your

class grove account to finish your homework
and/or submit your term paper
 Knowing basic UNIX commands is essential
to finish your homework
 UNIX Commands

 ls [names] – list files contained in a directory name or

that match a file name. If no name is given list those
files in current directory.
 ls –a list all files including hidden files
 ls –l list in long format (including details like
permissions, owner, size, etc.), works very much
like dir
 ls –al list all files (including hidden files) in long
format
 ls –dl dir_name lists information about the
directory, “dir_name”.
 What is a Directory?
Your home directory might contain a public_html directory. Your public_html
directory might contain an “index.html” file.

c3063xxx

public_html

index.html
 What is a Directory?

A file cannot hold a directory or a file!

c3063xxx

public_html

index.html

New_file_or_directory
 What is directory?

Directories can hold files and other directories

/

users tmp
bin etc backup
usern

user2 file1
user1 …… public_html

index.html
 What’s a directory?

 Files are grouped in the directory

structure. The file-system is arranged
like hierarchical tree
(inverted)structure.
 The top of the tree is called “root”
which usually contains several sub-
directories. In UNIX “/”(forward
slash) is used to present the “root”.
 Pathnames

 Absolute Pathnames  Relative pathnames

 In the previous  If you are already in
tree the users directory,
/users/usern/file1 is the relative
an absolute pathname for file1 is
pathname. usern/file1.
 Specifying Paths

What is the absolute path to index.html?

/

users tmp
bin etc backup
usern

user2 file1
user1 …… public_html

index.html
 Specifying Paths

What is the relative path to index.html

(assuming that usern is your pwd)?
/

users tmp
bin etc backup
usern

user2 file1
user1 …… public_html

index.html
 More UNIX commands

 pwd –let you know the absolute pathname of your

current working directory (Print Working Directory)
 cd [dir] – change directory

cd .. –go back to parent directory. “ ..” is the relative
pathname to the parent directory.

“.” -stands for current (working) directory.
 “~” – the tilde ~ character can refer your home directory
 More UNIX commands

 mkdir directories – create one or more

directories. You can specify them by
absolute or relative pathnames.
 cp
 cp file1 file2 – copy file1 to file2. If there’s
already a file2, the old one will be overwritten.
 cp file(s) directory – file(s) will be copied to the
directory.
 More UNIX commands

 mv sourcefile targetfile – basically mv

renames sourcefile to targetfile. If there’s a
file with the same name as targetfile, it will
be overwritten. mv works for directories in a
similar fashion.
 More UNIX commands

 rm file(s) – delete file(s).

 rmdir directories – delete one or more empty
directories.
 rm –r directories – can be used to delete non empty
directories. !!!WARNING!!! This will DELETE
EVERYTHING in that directory!!!
 You can not recover your files after you removed
them (unlike Windows OS).
 Permissions

 There are three types of file access supported

by UNIX.
 r – read, view the contents of a file or a directory
 w –write, edit file/directory contents
 x –execute, run executable file
 Permissions

Here’s an example
 Suppose you type in ls -l and the result is

- rwx r-x r-- 1 hans doc 858 Aug 22 22:28 hw1

What do all these symbols mean?

 Permissions

- rwx r-x r-- 1 hans doc 858 Aug 22 22:28 hw1

links owner File name

type
size Modification date/time
group
User
permissions

Group Other
permissions Permissions
 Permissions

 User – the person who created the file.

 Group – the group owns the file.
 Other – the rest of the world
 “754” is a decimal number. But you can
represent each digit with a binary number.
4 => read permission, 2 => write permission,
1=> execute permission
 Permissions

read=4;write= 2;execute=1
rwx r-x r--

4 + 2 + 1 4 + 0 + 1 4 + 0 + 0

7 5 4
 Permissions

rwx r-x r-- is a symbolic way to specify file modes,

while 754 is a numeric way (remember 7  111, 5
101, 4100 ? ). How would you represent this
file mode numerically?
--x --x –wx
How would you represent this bit string
symbolically?
614
 Permissions

 chmod mode file(s) – another UNIX

command! Change the access mode of one or
more files. Examples:
 chmod 751 my_file – the owner of my_file has rwx(7)
permission, the group has r-x(5) permission, others have
--x permission.
 Tell me what the following command will do?
chmod u=rwx, g=r, o=wr my_file
Remember user, group and others?
 Get started

 Create a new directory in your grove account

named public_html by using the following
command,
 mkdir public_html
 Go to this directory
 cd public_html
 Use pico to create a new file named
index.html
 Editor in UNIX

Some short cuts for the pico editor

 ^G Get Help
 ^O WriteOut
 ^R Read File
 ^Y Prev Pg
 ^K Cut Text
 ^C Cur Pos
 ^X Exit
 ^J Justify
 ^W Where is
 ^V Next Pg
 ^U UnCut Text
 ^T To Spell
 Get started

After you save the file index.html, change the

mode of this file by using the following
command,
chmod 644 index.html
(u=rw-, g=r--, o=r--)
Check whether you did it right
ls –l or dir
(What result should be displayed?)
 Get started

Then go back to parent directory

cd ..
Change the mode of public_html directory
chmod 755 public_html
( What’s the meaning of this command?)
Check if you got the mode set right
ls –dl public_html
 Where to get help?

 Come to see us during the office hours

 The CGS3063 tutorial available on line
(technical info)
 man subject(s) – the UNIX help command.
e.g.: to get help info about mv command you can
type man mv to get detailed manual of mv
command.
Thank you and good luck!