1 .\" Copyright (c) 2002 Andries Brouwer <aeb@cwi.nl>
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25 .\" 2007-10-23 mtk Added intro paragraph about section, plus a paragraph
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28 .TH INTRO 1 2007-11-15 "Linux" "Linux User's Manual"
30 intro \- introduction to user commands
32 Section 1 of the manual describes user commands and tools,
33 for example, file manipulation tools, shells, compilers,
34 web browsers, file and image viewers and editors, and so on.
36 All commands yield a status value on termination.
37 This value can be tested (e.g., in most shells the variable
39 contains the status of the last executed command)
40 to see whether the command completed successfully.
41 A zero exit status is conventionally used to indicate success,
42 and a nonzero status means that the command was unsuccessful.
43 (Details of the exit status can be found in
45 A nonzero exit status can be in the range 1 to 255, and some commands
46 use different nonzero status values to indicate the reason why the
49 Linux is a flavor of UNIX, and as a first approximation
50 all user commands under UNIX work precisely the same under
51 Linux (and FreeBSD and lots of other UNIX-like systems).
53 Under Linux, there are GUIs (graphical user interfaces), where you
54 can point and click and drag, and hopefully get work done without
55 first reading lots of documentation.
56 The traditional UNIX environment
57 is a CLI (command line interface), where you type commands to
58 tell the computer what to do.
59 That is faster and more powerful,
60 but requires finding out what the commands are.
61 Below a bare minimum, to get started.
63 In order to start working, you probably first have to open a session by
64 giving, your username and password.
69 (command interpreter) for you.
70 In case of a graphical login, you get a screen with menus or icons
71 and a mouse click will start a shell in a window.
75 One types commands to the
77 the command interpreter.
78 It is not built-in, but is just a program
79 and you can change your shell.
80 Everybody has her own favorite one.
81 The standard one is called
92 A session might go like:
96 .RB "knuth login: " aeb
97 .RB "Password: " ********
99 Tue Aug 6 23:50:44 CEST 2002
113 drwxrwxr\-x 2 aeb 1024 Aug 6 23:51 bin
114 \-rw\-rw\-r\-\- 1 aeb 37 Aug 6 23:52 tel
118 .RB "$ " "cp tel tel2"
121 drwxr\-xr\-x 2 aeb 1024 Aug 6 23:51 bin
122 \-rw\-r\-\-r\-\- 1 aeb 37 Aug 6 23:52 tel
123 \-rw\-r\-\-r\-\- 1 aeb 37 Aug 6 23:53 tel2
124 .RB "$ " "mv tel tel1"
127 drwxr\-xr\-x 2 aeb 1024 Aug 6 23:51 bin
128 \-rw\-r\-\-r\-\- 1 aeb 37 Aug 6 23:52 tel1
129 \-rw\-r\-\-r\-\- 1 aeb 37 Aug 6 23:53 tel2
130 .RB "$ " "diff tel1 tel2"
132 .RB "$ " "grep maja tel2"
140 here was the command prompt\(emit is the shell's way of indicating
141 that it is ready for the next command.
142 The prompt can be customized
143 in lots of ways, and one might include stuff like username,
144 machine name, current directory, time, and so on.
145 An assignment PS1="What next, master? "
146 would change the prompt as indicated.
148 We see that there are commands
150 (that gives date and time), and
152 (that gives a calendar).
156 lists the contents of the current directory\(emit tells you what
160 option it gives a long listing,
161 that includes the owner and size and date of the file, and the
162 permissions people have for reading and/or changing the file.
163 For example, the file "tel" here is 37 bytes long, owned by aeb
164 and the owner can read and write it, others can only read it.
165 Owner and permissions can be changed by the commands
172 will show the contents of a file.
173 (The name is from "concatenate and print": all files given as
174 parameters are concatenated and sent to "standard output"
178 the terminal screen.)
182 (from "copy") will copy a file.
186 (from "move"), on the other hand, only renames it.
190 lists the differences between two files.
191 Here there was no output because there were no differences.
195 (from "remove") deletes the file, and be careful! it is gone.
196 No wastepaper basket or anything.
201 (from "g/re/p") finds occurrences of a string in one or more files.
202 Here it finds Maja's telephone number.
203 .SS Pathnames and the current directory
204 Files live in a large tree, the file hierarchy.
207 describing the path from the root of the tree (which is called
210 For example, such a full pathname might be
212 Always using full pathnames would be inconvenient, and the name
213 of a file in the current directory may be abbreviated by giving
214 only the last component.
220 when the current directory is
225 prints the current directory.
229 changes the current directory.
237 usage: "cd", "cd .", "cd ..", "cd /" and "cd ~".
241 makes a new directory.
245 removes a directory if it is empty, and complains otherwise.
249 (with a rather baroque syntax) will find files with given name
251 For example, "find . \-name tel" would find
254 starting in the present directory (which is called
256 And "find / \-name tel" would do the same, but starting at the root
258 Large searches on a multi-GB disk will be time-consuming,
259 and it may be better to use
261 .SS Disks and filesystems
264 will attach the filesystem found on some disk (or floppy, or CDROM or so)
265 to the big filesystem hierarchy.
271 will tell you how much of your disk is still free.
273 On a UNIX system many user and system processes run simultaneously.
274 The one you are talking to runs in the
280 will show you which processes are active and what numbers these
284 allows you to get rid of them.
285 Without option this is a friendly
286 request: please go away.
287 And "kill \-9" followed by the number
288 of the process is an immediate kill.
289 Foreground processes can often be killed by typing Control-C.
290 .SS Getting information
291 There are thousands of commands, each with many options.
292 Traditionally commands are documented on
294 (like this one), so that the command "man kill" will document
295 the use of the command "kill" (and "man man" document the command "man").
298 sends the text through some
302 Hit the space bar to get the next page, hit q to quit.
304 In documentation it is customary to refer to man pages
305 by giving the name and section number, as in
307 Man pages are terse, and allow you to find quickly some forgotten
309 For newcomers an introductory text with more examples
310 and explanations is useful.
312 A lot of GNU/FSF software is provided with info files.
314 for an introduction on the use of the program
317 Special topics are often treated in HOWTOs.
319 .I /usr/share/doc/howto/en
320 and use a browser if you find HTML files there.
322 .\" Actual examples? Separate section for each of cat, cp, ...?
323 .\" gzip, bzip2, tar, rpm
projects / thirdparty / man-pages.git / blob