Introduction to the Linux

Environment
Brian E. Brzezicki
 First things first
• Log in to your linux machine using
– Username: student
– Password: student01
 Terminal!
Next Linux is VERY text based environment, so
let’s get used to the Terminal!
Click on Applications->Accessories->Terminal
until you get this! (next slide)
Terminal
 Terminal
• Go ahead and close it (click on the “x” in the
windows top bar) and open it again… you
need to get comfortable with the terminal
window!
Basics of the Linux File
System structure
 File System Layout
Linux is layed out in a heirarchical manner
starting from the “root” ( / ) directory. This is
similar to MS Windows except that
• Linix uses the / as a directory seperator,
Windows uses a \
• Windows has multiple “roots” one for each
drive (C:, D: etc). Linux has a single root,
separate physical drives are “grafted” onto the
tree
(see image)
Linux File System
 Entering Commands
When Entering commands in Linux, most
commands take a filename as an option. You
can specify a filename as a
• Full path – Example:
cat /etc/passwd

• Relative to your current directory

cd /etc
cat passwd
 Special “Relative directories”
• There are special entries for directories in
linux
. = “this directory”
.. = “back one directory”

If I was in the directory /etc/sysconfig, I could

read the file /etc/passwd with the following
command
cat /etc/passwd
Or
cat ../passwd
 Let’s look around
Open up your terminal windows now and let’s
look at some programs used to navigate the
filesystem in unix
 File System Commands
cd – change directory
pwd – print working directory

In your terminal type

cd /usr/local
Now type
pwd
What is the response?
 File System Commands
Now type
cd . .
and
pwd

Now what is the response?

.. is a useful argument to “cd” that moves you

back 1 directory level.
 File System Commands
You can add multiple “..” together
For example. Let’s get back to /usr/local
Use the command
cd /usr/local
Type
pwd
To verify your in “/usr/local”
What do you think will happen if I type
cd ../..
And type pwd?
 File System Commands
Right I’ll be back at the “root” directory! (/)

Now before we used to get to /usr/local by directly typing the

whole path. This is called an absolute path. Because we
specified the exact location that we want to go on the system.

But we can also move around using relative paths.

For example, let’s move back to the root directory (/)
Type
cd /
And verify with
pwd
 File System Commands
So now that we are at / let’s use “relative”
addressing to get to /usr/local

We are going to specific paths relative to where

we are
Type
cd usr
And
pwd
Where are we now?
 File System Commands
Now let’s move into local
Type
cd local
And
pwd
Where are we now?

Let’s start again and do it in only one step

 File System Commands
Type
cd /
And
pwd
We are back at root (/)
Type
cd usr/local
And
pwd
We are back at /usr/local
 File System Commands
OK now that we can move around let’s learn
another important linux command
ls list directory contents

cd /usr/local
ls
What is the response?
 File System Commands
How about
ls –l

(next page for results… explain the entries)

[root@linux1 local]# ls -l
total 72
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 9 2009 bin
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 9 2009 etc
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 9 2009 games
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 9 2009 include
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 9 2009 lib
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 9 2009 libexec
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 9 2009 sbin
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 Apr 18 14:03 share
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Mar 9 2009 src
 Useful ls options
• ls –l long listing
• ls –la long listing, how “hidden” files
(file starting with .)
• ls –lh long listing with easy to read
file sizes
• ls –lt long listing sorted by time and
date, most recent first
• ls –ltr long listing, sorted by time
(reverse)
 Using ls
Do a quick exercise
cd /home
pwd
ls
cd student
pwd
ls -latr
 File System Commands
To effectively run Linux you have to have a
solid grasp on the filesystem structure and
the commands to move around.

Get used to CD, PWD and LS

 More useful Commands (set 2)
rm remove file
rm –rf remove directory and
everything in that
directory recursively
rmdir remove empty directory
mkdir make directory
cp copy a file
mv move a file
 More Useful Commands (set 3)
cat show the contents of a file
more show the contents of a file
tail show the last lines of a file
tail -10 shows the last 10 lines of a file
tail -f shows as lines are added to a
file
echo displays whatever you type
 More useful commands (set 4)
chmod – change file permissions
chmod username filename
example
chmod student /tmp/file
chown – change file owner
chown u+rwx,g+rwx,o+rwx filename
u-rwx,g-rwx,o-rwx
 Example of chmod
cd /tmp
touch file
ls –l file
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Apr 21 15:41 file
chmod u+x,g+x,o-r file
ls –l file
-rwxr-x--- 1 root root 0 Apr 21 15:41 file
chmod u+rwx,g+rwx,o+rwx file
ls –l file
-rwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Apr 21 15:41 file
 More useful commands (set 5)
grep search a file for a specific line of text
grep root /etc/passwd
[root@linux1 ~]# grep root /etc/passwd
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
operator:x:11:0:operator:/root:/sbin/nologin

locate search the system for a specific filename

locate ssh_config
[root@linux1 ~]# locate ssh_config
/etc/ssh/ssh_config
/usr/share/man/man5/ssh_config.5.gz
 The PIPE operator (|)
When working with unix, you notice one command
usually gives you output.
With linux you can “tie” the output of one program into
the “input” of another program with the pipe
operator. This is incredibly handy and will be used a
lot in your linux administration tasks.

cat /etc/passwd | grep root

[root@linux1 ~]# cat /etc/passwd |grep root
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash
operator:x:11:0:operator:/root:/sbin/nologin
 Redirect operators
Like with PIPE in Linux you can redirect the
output of one command to a file (>), or
redirect the contents of a file to be the input of
a program (<)

Example
grep root /etc/passwd > /tmp/grep_results.txt
or
grep root < /etc/passwd
 Process operators
Often in Linux you will want to see what
processes are running and possibly
manipulate them you do this will the
commands

ps
ps –ef
kill
kill -9 pid
kill –TERM pid
 su
In unix you generally log in as a “user” account
rather than the superuser account

su is a command that lets you switch to a

different user and run commands as them

su – root
su - student
 vi
Linux adminstration is very much about text
configuration files. When you have a GUI you
can edit these files with a normal editor…
however if you want to run Linux you better
get used to a text editor. I’d suggest vi

So let’s look at vi in the next couple slides

 vi
First let’s copy a file that we can edit
cp /usr/share/dict/words /tmp/words.txt

Now let’s open this with vi

vi /tmp/words.txt
 vi
Now that we are in vi you should understand vi
has 2 modes.

Movement mode
Edit mode

When you start you are put into movement

mode, an you can move the cursor around
using the commands (next page)
 Vi movement mode
j up a line
k down a line
h left 1 character
l right one character

Use these characters to move around!

Note you can specify a number before the
command for example
5j would move you down 5 lines
 vi movement mode
You also can go to a certain line number with
the command

:XX
Where XX is a line number
Example
Typing
:50 would take me to line 50
 vi edit mode
Once we are were we want to type or delete
in the file we can use “edit mode”
commands.

Some edit mode commands

x delete the current characterk
dd delete the entire current line
You can add a number before either of these
commands to do that command multiple
times
 Typing in characters
So now that we know the basics of deleting
characters… how about adding characters?
To do so, we enter insert mode by typing
i enter insert mode

Typing I will let you start entering characters

that will go to the left of the current character.
Once in insert mode… type away when your
done hit the “Esc” button
 Saving the file
When you want to save the file make sure your in
normal mode (usually hit esc) then hit
:w save the file but remain open for
editing
:wq save the file and quit

There are tons more vi commands, but these are the

basics and should provide you with all that you need
to do your work. I myself only know a few more than
this as these commands make up 95% of anything
you’ll want to do.
 man pages
Linux is much different than windows is that the
documentation (useful documentation) for each
command is stored on the system and available with
man pages.

To view the documentation for a command type

man command
Example
man ls
You can even do a man on the man pages
man man
You will learn to love the man pages!
Labs! Let’s get some hands
on practice now!