Introduction to Linux

UNIT 3
UNIX/LINUX OPERATING SYSTEM
Introduction to Unix
History of UNIX
What is LINUX
LINUX Distributions
Unix OS Structure
Unix File System
Unix Directories, Files and Inodes
Users, Groups and Permissions

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Introduction to Linux

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.

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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.
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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.

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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 Linux was originated.

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What is LINUX

Linux 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 Linux is freely available to
everyone.

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LINUX 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 Linux 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.
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UNIX Structure

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UNIX File System

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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.

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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

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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.

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Structure of Standard Directories

in Unix/Linux
/ 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 CD−ROM drive.
/etc Miscellaneous system configuration files,
startup files, etc.

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Structure of Standard Directories

in Unix/Linux
/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 `/'.)

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Introduction to Linux
Structure of Standard Directories
in Unix/Linux
/sbin Essential system administrator tools, or
system binaries.
/tmp Temporary files.
/usr Subdirectories with files related to user tools
and applications.

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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 16
stamp, pointers to files data blocks on the disk etc.
Introduction to Linux
Users, Groups and Access
Permissions
In UNIX/LINUX, 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

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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.
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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 file or
application.
others — All users with access to the
system.

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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

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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.

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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 and world-

executable, but not world-writable.

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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

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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
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Make Directory

The command mkdir my_dir

makes new directory my_dir (the path is given

relative) as a subdirectory of the current directory.

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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.

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Rename and/or Move the File

The command mv file_1 file_2

moves file_1 to file_2

The both files must be in the same working

directory.

If they are in different directories, the path must be

given.

The file_1 is removed from the disk.

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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.
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Access Permission of File/Directory

The ownership of the file or directory can be
changed using the command
chown <owner> <file/directory name>
The group of the file or directory can be changed
using the command
chgrp <group> <file/directory name>
The permissions of the file can be changed using
chmod command
chmod -R ### <filename or directory>
-R is optional and when used with directories will
traverse all the sub-directories of the target30
Introduction to Linux
Access Permission of
File/Directory
The #'s can be:
0 = Nothing
1 = Execute
2 = Write
3 = Execute & Write  (2 + 1)
4 = Read
5 = Execute & Read (4 + 1)
6 = Read & Write (4 + 2)
7 = Execute & Read & Write (4 + 2 + 1)

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Introduction to Linux

Assignment
Login as guest (password is guest)
Find the present Directory
Write the root directory structure
Write a few commands available in /bin and /sbin directory
Find the guest directory
Write the permissions of guest directory
Create a new Directory test in guest directory
Copy the file /etc/resolv.conf in test directory
Rename the test directory to testing
Delete the testing directory
Change the permissions of guest directory to 700
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Change the permissions of /tmp directory to 700