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Summary of this section

• yppasswd : Changes your password.

  Usage: To change your password for all the machines in the network,

  yppasswd

• ls : Lists files and subdirectories in the present directory.

  Usage : To list files and subdirs in the present directory,

  ls

  To list files and subdirs in the directory sub_dir,

  ls sub_dir

  To see if you have that file in the present directory,

  ls file

• mkdir : To make a directory

  Usage: mkdir new_dir_name

• cd : ``change directory"

  Usage : To change to a subdirectory,

  cd sub_dir

  To go one up to the parent directory,

  cd ..

  To go to the home directory (the one you get when you login),

  cd

• pwd : ``print working directory''

  Usage : To find out where you are,

  pwd

When you login, KDE window manager will come up. It may take a few seconds. The organization of KDE is very similar to Windows. The first thing you need to click on is the big `K' icon at the bottom left corner. This is like the `Start' button on Windows. Click it and you will see lots things such as applications, settings and logout.

Now unlike Windows, Unix is all about command line. So sooner or later, you have to know how to do things at the command prompt. The sooner, the better. The first thing to do is to find the `xterm' icon from the bottom bar. It looks like a little terminal. Click it and you should see a window popping up with something like this:

HAL9000>

Now,

You can do that by typing

HAL9000> yppasswd

at the prompt. You will be asked to input your new password twice. Memorize your password. If you don't know, or you have forgotten your password, go to your system operator, beg for mercy, get a new temporary password, then change it to a new one.

Now that you are in, first let's see what you have. Type

HAL9000> ls

This results in something like

foo.txt        foo.tex        foo        foodir

You may think of ls as a shorthand for ``list'' though I have no idea if that was really the origin of the name. Unix command names tend to have peculiar origins, like grep<sup>2</sup>. Some are easy to memorize, for instance cp for ``copy", but some names may seem to have no connection whatsoever to their functions (what do you think awk does?). But that's life. You win some, you lose some.

So, you have two objects foo.txt, foo.tex that look like files and and things called foo and foodir. To find more about each object do

HAL9000> ls -l

If the very first letter of an entry is d, that means that entry is a directory. If you see x's in the first column, that means the object in principle can be run as a program.

To see the content of a subdir, type

HAL9000> ls foodir

If it is a subdir, then it will result in

oof.txt        oof.tex        oof        oofdir

If it is an ordinary file after all, it will just say

foodir

To see all the files including files that start with . (these are usually config files like .tcshrc),

HAL9000> ls -a

To find out more about ls, type

HAL9000> info ls

info is the command that retrieves information on the command you are interested in.

To read a file, type

HAL9000> less foo.txt

Other file readers include more and the primitive cat.

It is in general much better to organize your materials into subdirectories. To make a subdirectory,

HAL9000> mkdir new_dir_name

To change to a subdirectory, type

HAL9000> cd foodir

You can think of cd as an acronym for ``change directory". Going one ladder up in the directory structure (to the parent directory) is

HAL9000> cd ..

NOTE: The present directory in Unix is always represented by a dot. That is, if you do

HAL9000> cd .

it does nothing because you are changing directory to where you are now.

To go to the home directory (the one you get when you login), simply type

HAL9000> cd

To find out in which corner of your subdirectory maze you are currently stuck in, type

HAL9000> pwd

pwd stands for `print working directory'. This will result in something like

/homes/hal9000/dave

The paths before you user name indicate on which disk your home directory is located. But be warned that sometimes pwd produces inconsistent result when you are logging in from someone else's machine.

If you want to quit, type logout or exit. This will normally quit the x-term you are currently in. If you want to quit the session and get back to the login window, find a menu item under the `K' button that says logout.