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Brief History of UNIX:

- During the l960s, General Electric, MIT, and Bell Labs worked on a time-sharing operating system (MULTICS).
- Ken Thompson (Bell Labs), who worked on the MULTICS project, wanted to retain Space Wars for his use; during the early 1970s, he created an operating system to run on a PDP7 (UNICS --| UNIX).
- Because AT&T was a monopoly at that time, they could not sell the operating system, they made it available to universities: Carnegie Mellon and UC Berkeley.
- During the 1980s, the end of the AT&T monopoly and the need for an operating system for 16-bit microcomputers created a market for UNIX.
- Current Versions:
System V (Bell labs), AIX (IBM), UC Berkeley
- UNIX Reference Books:
any UNIX book is good -- System V is slightly more preferable.

Accessing UNIX:

Turn on the power for the terminal -- you must wait a few moments until the RISC System/6000 prompt is displayed. Note: UNIX is case-sensitive! Be sure the CAPS-LOCK key is OFF.

login: [user id] six letters (last) + 2 letters (first)
password: [ password] social security number (no hyphens)

The dollar sign ($) prompt indicates that you have successfully accessed the UNIX operating system.

$ pwd shows where you are on the system (current directory)
$ ls -FCA shows what files and directories exist in current directory
$ who shows the users currently on the system
$ passwd allows the user to change his/her password

Special Characters:

[ Backspace ] to correct simple typos [ ctrl ] -x kill character: to delete entire command [ ctrl ] -c interrupt character: to terminate a command [ Ctrl ] -d end-of-file character: to terminate a file $ exit (or) [ctrl]-d to log off the system

Directory Tree Structure:

Files are maintained in UNIX using a tree structure. There is a single root directory (/) which may be further divided into subdirectories; each subdirectory may in turn be further divided into subdirectories. Any of these areas are capable of storing files.

Three directories have special significance:

root directory the top-level directory from which all others descend
home directory the directory to which you are assigned when you log in " /www.d/wwwserver/yourusername "
current directory the directory to which you are currently assigned

The following UNIX commands are appropriate to navigating the tree structure organization:

$ cd change to home directory
$ cd / change to root directory
$ cd [ path ] change to directory specified by (path)
$ cd .. change to directory one level up (parent directory)
$ mkdir [direct_name] to "make" a new directory
$ rmdir [direct_name] to "remove" an obsolete directory

Objects (i.e., files and subdirectories) which are "underneath" the current directory in the tree structure may be referenced by a partially-qualified name; otherwise, they must be referenced by a fully-qualified name.

/www.d/wwwserver/scrocco/public_html/img/my.gif fully-qualified name
public_html/img/my.gif partially-qualified name (from directory /www.d/wwwserver/scrocco)

File Maintenance:

$ cat [filename] display contents of [filename], without pause
$ pg [filename] display contents of [filename], with pause - use
$ cp [from] [to] "copy" file [from] to new file [to]
$ mv [from] [to] "move" file [from] to new file [to]
$ rm [old] "moves" file [old]

Mail Utility:

$ mail [user id] to send mail to another user
Subject: [ subject ]
[ text ]
...
[ ctrl ] -d

$ mail to retrieve your own mail
lists [subject] [user id]
displays ? prompt
? - help
# - display item
d - delete item

Help Utilities:

$ man [command] to obtain help concerning [command]
use [SpaceBar] to advance screens

Miscellaneous Commands:

$ env display UNIX environment
$ stty display terminal settings
$ set display other settings