UNIX

FUNDAMENTALS

By - Sarvesh Kumar Gupta

 Agenda…

History Of Unix
Features of Unix
Unix System Organization
Unix File System
Commands
VI Editor
 History Of Unix

 UNIX was first developed in1965 by Bell Telephone Labs and

GE Company

 Initially, UNIX was named MULTICS

 Dennis Ritchie and Ken Thompson of AT&T started afresh in

1969 and developed on PDP-7

 The system was named UNIX by Brian Kernighan

 History Of Unix

 In 1971, UNIX was ported on PDP-11 (16 bit)

 This flavor was developed on Assembler and system dependent

 To Handle this, Ken developed ‘B’ language

 But, ‘B’ has some deficiencies

 Ritchie modified ‘B’ and developed ‘C’

 The whole UNIX was written in ‘C’ except some modules

Evolution continued…

 1975 (UCB) Berkeley developments starts

 1980 Xenix by Microsoft
 1982 HPUX was introduced

 1991 Linus Trovalds creates LINUX kernel

 1999 Red Hat Inc. release Red Hat Linux version6.0

 NOW Two major standards of UNIX are in market

SysV(AT&T) release and BSD release
Prominent Unix flavors !!!

 BSD: Berkeley, BSD

 Solaris: Sun Microsystems, Sys 5/BSD
 Ultrix: Digital Equipment Corporation, BSD
 OSF 1: Digital Equipment Corporation, BSD/sys 5
 HPUX: Hewlett-Packard, Sys 5 /BSD
 AIX: IBM, Sys 5 / BSD .
 IRIX: Silicon Graphics, Sys 5 .
 GNU/Linux: GNU, BSD/POSIX
 Minimum Hardware requirements

 Minimum of 80 MB Hard disk space with 4 MB RAM

 Any 80286 and above processor

 UNIX requires about 1MB RAM space for each extra terminal
connected to it
Features of UNIX…

Multi-user Capability

 Terminals are connected to the host (main machine) through

controller card
 The controller card provides 4/8/16 ports
 UNIX supports different terminals
 Dumb Terminal
 Terminal emulation (Using Emulation Software)
 Dial-in Terminal (Using telephone to connect to host)
Features of UNIX…

Multitasking

 UNIX is capable of carrying more than one job at a time

 Do jobs in foreground and background

 Achieved through dividing the CPU time intelligently among all

processes being carried-out
Features of UNIX…

Security
 Allows sharing of data

 Three levels of security

 Login level security

 File Security through permissions

 File encryption utility

Features of UNIX…

Portability

 Can be ported to any system with bare minimum modifications

 This was achieved through C as UNIX was written in C

System Organization

Tools & Applications

Shell

Kernel
Users
Hardware
 System Organization

 Manned in three levels

 Heart of UNIX is Kernel

 Kernel interacts with hardware

 Communication is carried out by the second layer, Shell. Shell is

a basic command interpreter

 Third level is the User applications

 Shells

There are many shells available on Unix

 Bourne Shell (/bin/bash) or (/bin/sh)

 C Shell (/bin/csh)
 Korn Shell (/bin/ksh)
 Restricted Bourne Shell(/bin/rsh)
 Secured Bourne Shell (/bin/ssh)
 Getting started

Logging to Unix
 Access to Unix is through a login and a password
 Login & password will be created by the System administrator
 Password will not be visible while typing
 After three successive failures of login, the login will be
disabled
 If login/password or both not entered correctly, it returns a
message “login incorrect”
 After Successful login, command prompt is displayed (# or $)
 Behind the Logging ….

 login/password

 Checks the authenticity in /etc/passwd file

 Executes .profile file which was created at the time of account

creation

 Then, the command prompt is displayed

 Logging Out !!!

This can be done by any of these three methods :

 Press Ctrl +d

 Type “exit” in the command prompt

 Type “logout” in the command prompt

 Unix File System

 Unix understands everything as a file. It may be a disk or

terminal or directory or a file

 All hardware devices are accessed through files

 Files can be primarily categorized into three types :

 Ordinary Files (represented by ‘-’ while listing)
 Directory Files (represented by ‘d’ while listing)
 Device Files (present in /dev)
File System Hierarchy
 Commands

Ground Rules ::

 All Unix commands should be entered in lower case letters

 Commands may have arguments
 Between command and arguments, there must be at least one
space or tab
 All command flags will be given with ‘-’ (Hyphen)
 Arguments can be clubbed into a single argument

Eg : ls –la
 Commands

File manipulation commands

 File Creating - touch , vi

 File Viewing - cat, more, less, head , tail
 File Listing - ls
 File Linking - ln , ln –s
 File removing - rm
 File copying - cp
 File renaming or moving – mv
 Directory commands – cd, mkdir, rmdir
 File permissions – chmod, chgrp, chown
 Commands

 touch file1 - creates an ordinary file ‘file1’

 touch –a file1 - changes only the access time of ‘file1’
 touch –m file1 - changes only the modification time
 touch file1 file2 - creates two files ‘file1’ and file2’ of zero size

 cat file1 - displays contents of ‘file1’

 cat > file1 - whatever is typed after this will go into ‘file1’

 cat >>file1 - whatever is typed after this will be appended

 cat file1 file2 - displays the contents of ‘file1’ and ‘file2’
 cat file1>file2 - ‘file2’ will be overwritten with contents of ‘file1’
 cat file1>>file2 - contents of ‘file1’ will be appended to ‘file2’
 Commands
 cat file1 file2> file3 - ‘file3’ is overwritten with the contents
of ‘file1’ and ‘file2’
 cat file1 file2>>file3 - contents of ‘file1’ and ‘file2’ are
appended to ‘file3’

 more file1 - used to filter the file for CRT viewing

 less file1 - similar to ‘more’. Enables forward as well as
backward movement
 head -50 file1 - displays the first fifty lines of ‘file1’
 head file1 - displays the first ten lines of ‘file1’
 Commands
 ls - list all files in current directory
 ls –a - list all files including hidden
 ls –l - long listing
 ls –r - reverse order while sorting
 ls –t - sort by modification time
 ls –R - lists subdirectories recursively
 ls –U - lists entries in directory order
 ls dirname - lists all files in the directory
 ls a* - lists all files starting with ‘a’
 ls [a-c]* - lists all files starting with ‘a’,’b’ and ‘c’
 Commands

 ls –l gives something like this

total 32
-rwxr-x--x 1 usr1 group1 24 jan 06 10:13 file1
drwxr-x--x 1 usr1 group1 24 jan 06 10:13 file2
-rwxr-x--x 2 usr1 group1 24 jan 06 10:13 file3

 total 32 means current directory occupied 32 blocks

 Generally each block in UNIX is 1024

 UNIX uses file types to distinguish files

 Commands

This is the first - (hyphen) place in output

- : hyphen is ordinary file
d : directory file
c : character specific file like terminals
b : block specific file like hard disk
l : symbolic link
s : Semaphore
p : named pipe
m : shared memory file
 Commands

 The next 9 characters provides the information about file

permissions
 Next column gives the number of links
 Owner name
 Group name
 File size in bytes
 Date & Time of last modified
 Finally the file name
 Owner concept comes with multi-user OS
 The file creator is the owner by default
 Group is formed with same type of users
 Commands

 The first 3 characters in permission field is owner permissions

 The next 3 characters tells about the group permissions
 Last 3 characters gives the other permissions
 There are three types of permissions like
r - read permission
w - write permission
x - execution permission
rwxr-x--x means
 Owner of this file has read, write and execute permissions
 Group has read and execute permissions
 Others has only execution permissions
 Commands

 Permissions can be encoded numerically

 Read ( r ) - Weight 4
 Write ( w ) - Weight 2
 Execute ( x ) - Weight 1
 The weight of Read+Write+Execution (rwx) is 4 + 2 + 1 = 7
 The weight of Read+Execution (r-x) is 4 + 1 = 5
 The weight of Write+Execution(-wx) is 2+1 = 3
 Commands

 Existing file permissions can be changed with the command

chmod
 To change the rwxr-x--x (751) permissions to rwxrwxrwx (777)
permissions of file1 is
$chmod 777 file1
 To give write permission to all
$chmod +w file1
 To remove write permissions to all including the owner
$chmod -w file1
 The above command is generally used to keep a file safe by
making it READ-ONLY
 Commands

 Default file creation permissions will be obtained from the umask

value
 Mask of umask will give the actual permissions
 Mask is subtract value from 7
 If umask is 021, then the default file permissions are
7-0,7-2,7-1
i.e. 756 are the permissions (rwxr-xrw-)

 754 are the most widely used permissions for a directory

 Commands
 To safeguard the directories from malicious intentions, sticky bit
may be added to the directory
 Disables file deletion
 Can be given by
$chmod +t dir-name
 Sticky bit will be added at the end in the permission string
 This has weight 1
 To give both 754 & Sticky bit permissions in one command
$chmod 1754 dir-name
 Only the owner & super-user can delete the files in this directory
 If the sticky bit is on to a file, the file becomes memory resident
 Commands

 To know the free spaces in the UNIX, the df (disk free) command
can be used
$df
/(dev/root): 12500 blocks 27654 I-nodes
 df gives the blocks of 512 bytes size
 To know the disk usage, give:
$du
 UNIX uses a variable called ulimit which controls the maximum
file size any user can create
 This is to save the disk space misuse.
$ulimit
 Commands

 Stands for Calendar

 Can print a calendar between year 1 to 9999
$cal 1960
 Prints the whole calendar of 1960
$cal 4 1960
 Prints only April month calendar of 1960
 Prints the given string in big letters
$banner <string>
 Used to know the file type like shell script, executable, etc
$file file-name
 Commands

 wc - Used to know the number of characters, number of files

and number of lines in a file
$wc file1
$wc -l file1
 Displays the number of lines in file1
 grep -Acronym for ‘Globally search a Regular Expression and
Print it’
 Searches for a pattern in file(s)
$grep abc file1
 Searches for the string ‘abc’ in file1
 Commands

 Link is an alias to a file.

Two types of links .
Hard and Soft.
Hard link
# ln file1 file2.
 No separate file is created.
 Cannot link directories.
 Cannot link across file-systems.
 To remove a file all links must be removed.
 Commands

 Soft/symbolic Link
 # ln –s Old file New file
 Can link directories.
 Can link across file-systems.
 Commands

 rm - The file removed can not be recovered like in DOS using

undelete
 Care should be taken while deleting:
$rm file1 - Removes file1
$rm -i file1- Removes file interactively. Removes after
confirmation
$rm -r dir1- Removes files from dir1 recursively
$rm -ir dir1- Removes file from dir1 recursively and
interactively
 Commands
 To rename file1 as file2 by:
$mv file1 file2
 To rename directories by:
$mv old-dir new-dir
 mv actually copies old-file to new-file and removes old-file
 To copy file1 to file2 by:
$cp file1 file2
 To copy files to directory
$cp file1 file2 dir-name
 Can copy files across directories by providing absolute or relative
path:
$cp /usr1/file1 /usr2/file1
 Commands

 To change the mode of access on a file :

 chmod u+x,g-x file1
 chmod o-rwx file2
 chmod 777 file3
 To change the ownership of a file :
 chown user2 file1
 To change the group ownership of a file :
 chgrp group2 file1
 To change the group of a user :
 usermod –g group2 user1
 Try these Commands !!!

 tar –cvf <filename>.tar <dirname>

 tar –xvf <filename>.tar

 tar –zxvf <compressed file>

 gzip <filename>

 gunzip <filename>.z
 Try these Commands !!!
 ps
 tty
 stty
 date
 whoami
 who
 bc – calculator
 id
 clear
 echo $?
 locate <filename>
 Try these commands !!!

 echo “ Today is date "

 echo “ Today is `date` ”
 echo $PWD
 echo $PATH
 echo $OSTYPE
 echo $BASH
 echo $BASH_VERSION
 echo $PATH
 echo $SHELL
 echo $HOME
 VI Editor
 To insert new text esc + i
 To append text esc + a
 To insert text at line start esc + I
 To append text line end esc + A
 To save file esc + : + w
 To save file with file name esc + : + w  "filename“
 To quit the vi editor esc + : + q
 To quit without saving esc + : + q!
 To save and quit vi editor esc + : + wq or x
 To search for specified word
in forward direction esc + /word
 VI Editor
 To continue with search  n
 To search for specified word
in backward direction esc + ?word

 To copy the line where

cursor is located esc + yy
 To paste the text just deleted
or copied at the cursor esc + p
 To delete entire line where
cursor is located esc + dd
 To delete word from
cursor position esc + dw
 VI Editor

 To move up one line k

 To move down one line j
 To move left one character h
 To move right one character l
 To move one word right w
 To move one word left b
 To set numbers for lines esc + :set nu
 To unset numbers for lines esc + :set nonu
THANKS