Introduction To Unix Shell Accounts at Lancaster University

Copyright (c) 2004,2005,2006 TABITHA TIPPER.
Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled “GNU Free Documentation License”.

WARNING: While the following document makes every effort to be factually correct some errors may be present, this document was only written by humans. Be sure to understand what you’re typing before you press enter as no responsibility will be taken for incorrect information or loss of data caused by use or reference to this document.

• Contents
• Welcome to the Unix System at Lancaster (unix.lancs.ac.uk)
  • What this document tells you
  • What is the point of the Unix systems
  • Primer on the concepts involved
  • About this document
  • About the author
  • Acknowledgements
• User Accounts
  • What? Why? What can it do?
  • Home directories (∼)
  • Details
  • groups
  • Passwords and why they matter
  • Finding out other peoples usernames
  • Seeing who else is logged on and what they’re doing
  • Finding out who’s been logging in when
• Getting Help
  • man
  • info
  • apropos
  • whatis
  • -help (dash help) and –help (dash dash help)
  • The Library
  • Google / Linux
  • LuBBs (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/socs/lubbs)
• File Management
  • Configuration files
  • Basic Commands
  • Directories
  • Finding files
  • Paths, relative and absolute
  • tar and tarfiles
  • gzip/gunzip
  • Permissions
  • Quota
  • H: Drive
  • Moving files to and from the Unix systems from off campus
  • scratch ($scratch)
  • webspace ($WWWHOME)
  • mailspace ($MAILHOME)
  • Dealing with awkward files
• Editing Text
  • why is this important?
  • vi and vim http://hedgehog:8080/help/vi.html
  • emacs http://hedgehog:8080/help/emacs.html
  • pico http://hedgehog:8080/help/pico.html
  • ue (Lancaster Version) http://hedgehog:8080/help/ue-master.ps
  • Line Counting (wc)
  • spell checking (ispell)
• Prompts and Shells
  • What is a shell?
  • Name completion
  • Environment variables
  • What is a terminal?
  • Prompts
  • What happens when you log in
  • What happens when you log out
  • running programs
  • useful things your shell can do:
  • Gotchas
• Processes
  • What is a process
  • Running multiple jobs
  • Kill
  • ps
  • top
• Email and Unix
  • A general overview of email under Unix
  • Forwarding Email
  • Mail User Agent
  • fetchmail
  • procmail, your MDA
• The Net and Unix
  • Browsing the web
  • Downloading files
  • Querying DNS (Domain Name System)
  • Seeing network activity on the host
  • Seeing if another machine is running
  • Logging into remote machines
  • Copying files from remote machines
• Plumbing
  • pipes
  • redirects
  • Embedding commands in other commands
• Shell scripting and more useful commands
  • More useful commands
• Other useful commands and information
  • Changing user accounts
  • Finding out about your local Unix system
  • Links, symbolic and hard
  • screen
  • talk and write
  • Looking at binary files
  • Scheduling commands to run later
• Localised Advice
  • homegrown
  • Changing your account details and forgetting your password
  • Password Synchronisation
  • procmail and the config moving monster
  • scratch
  • Process slaying
  • Getting to central files
  • ∼clinch
  • Printing from Unix
  • Printer Budget
  • LuBBs (http://www.lancs.ac.uk/socs/lubbs/)
  • Changing your shell
  • Contacting the Unix Sysadmins
• Sample configuration files
• Quick Reference
• GNU Free Documentation License

This document was translated from L^AT_EX by H^EV^EA.