UNIX Tutorial Six

Other useful UNIX commands  

quota

All students are allocated a certain amount of disk space on the file system for their personal files, usually about 100Mb. If you go over your quota, you are given 7 days to remove excess files.

To check your current quota and how much of it you have used, type

% quota -v

df

The df command reports on the space left on the file system. For example, to find out how much space is left on the fileserver, type

% df .

du

The du command outputs the number of kilobyes used by each subdirectory. Useful if you have gone over quota and you want to find out which directory has the most files. In your home-directory, type

% du -s *

The -s flag will display only a summary (total size) and the * means all files and directories.

gzip

This reduces the size of a file, thus freeing valuable disk space. For example, type

% ls -l science.txt

and note the size of the file using ls -l . Then to compress science.txt, type

% gzip science.txt

This will compress the file and place it in a file called science.txt.gz

To see the change in size, type ls -l again.

To expand the file, use the gunzip command.

% gunzip science.txt.gz

zcat

zcat will read gzipped files without needing to uncompress them first.

% zcat science.txt.gz

If the text scrolls too fast for you, pipe the output though less .

% zcat science.txt.gz | less

file

file classifies the named files according to the type of data they contain, for example ascii (text), pictures, compressed data, etc.. To report on all files in your home directory, type

% file *

diff

This command compares the contents of two files and displays the differences. Suppose you have a file called file1 and you edit some part of it and save it as file2. To see the differences type

% diff file1 file2

Lines beginning with a < denotes file1, while lines beginning with a > denotes file2.

find

This searches through the directories for files and directories with a given name, date, size, or any other attribute you care to specify. It is a simple command but with many options - you can read the manual by typing man find.

To search for all fies with the extention .txt, starting at the current directory (.) and working through all sub-directories, then printing the name of the file to the screen, type

% find . -name "*.txt" -print

To find files over 1Mb in size, and display the result as a long listing, type

% find . -size +1M -ls

history

The C shell keeps an ordered list of all the commands that you have entered. Each command is given a number according to the order it was entered.

% history (show command history list)

If you are using the C shell, you can use the exclamation character (!) to recall commands easily.

% !! (recall last command)

% !-3 (recall third most recent command)

% !5 (recall 5th command in list)

% !grep (recall last command starting with grep)

You can increase the size of the history buffer by typing

% set history=100

UNIX Tutorial Five

5.1 File system security (access rights)

In your unixstuff directory, type

% ls -l (l for long listing!)

You will see that you now get lots of details about the contents of your directory, similar to the example below.

Each file (and directory) has associated access rights, which may be found by typing ls -l. Also, ls -lg gives additional information as to which group owns the file (beng95 in the following example):

-rwxrw-r-- 1 ee51ab beng95 2450 Sept29 11:52 file1

In the left-hand column is a 10 symbol string consisting of the symbols d, r, w, x, -, and, occasionally, s or S. If d is present, it will be at the left hand end of the string, and indicates a directory: otherwise - will be the starting symbol of the string.

The 9 remaining symbols indicate the permissions, or access rights, and are taken as three groups of 3.

• The left group of 3 gives the file permissions for the user that owns the file (or directory) (ee51ab in the above example); 
• the middle group gives the permissions for the group of people to whom the file (or directory) belongs (eebeng95 in the above example);
• the rightmost group gives the permissions for all others.

The symbols r, w, etc., have slightly different meanings depending on whether they refer to a simple file or to a directory.

Access rights on files.

• r (or -), indicates read permission (or otherwise), that is, the presence or absence of permission to read and copy the file 
• w (or -), indicates write permission (or otherwise), that is, the permission (or otherwise) to change a file 
• x (or -), indicates execution permission (or otherwise), that is, the permission to execute a file, where appropriate

Access rights on directories.

• r allows users to list files in the directory;
• w means that users may delete files from the directory or move files into it;
• x means the right to access files in the directory. This implies that you may read files in the directory provided you have read permission on the individual files.

So, in order to read a file, you must have execute permission on the directory containing that file, and hence on any directory containing that directory as a subdirectory, and so on, up the tree.

Some examples

-rwxrwxrwx	a file that everyone can read, write and execute (and delete).
-rw-------	a file that only the owner can read and write - no-one else  can read or write and no-one has execution rights (e.g. your  mailbox file).

5.2 Changing access rights

chmod (changing a file mode)

Only the owner of a file can use chmod to change the permissions of a file. The options of chmod are as follows

Symbol	Meaning
u	user
g	group
o	other
a	all
r	read
w	write (and delete)
x	execute (and access directory)
+	add permission
-	take away permission

For example, to remove read write and execute permissions on the file biglist for the group and others, type

% chmod go-rwx biglist

This will leave the other permissions unaffected.

To give read and write permissions on the file biglist to all,

% chmod a+rw biglist

Exercise 5a

Try changing access permissions on the file science.txt and on the directory backups

Use ls -l to check that the permissions have changed.

5.3 Processes and Jobs

A process is an executing program identified by a unique PID (process identifier). To see information about your processes, with their associated PID and status, type

% ps

A process may be in the foreground, in the background, or be suspended. In general the shell does not return the UNIX prompt until the current process has finished executing.

Some processes take a long time to run and hold up the terminal. Backgrounding a long process has the effect that the UNIX prompt is returned immediately, and other tasks can be carried out while the original process continues executing.

Running background processes

To background a process, type an & at the end of the command line. For example, the command sleep waits a given number of seconds before continuing. Type

% sleep 10

This will wait 10 seconds before returning the command prompt %. Until the command prompt is returned, you can do nothing except wait.

To run sleep in the background, type

% sleep 10 &

[1] 6259

The & runs the job in the background and returns the prompt straight away, allowing you do run other programs while waiting for that one to finish.

The first line in the above example is typed in by the user; the next line, indicating job number and PID, is returned by the machine. The user is be notified of a job number (numbered from 1) enclosed in square brackets, together with a PID and is notified when a background process is finished. Backgrounding is useful for jobs which will take a long time to complete.

Backgrounding a current foreground process

At the prompt, type

% sleep 1000

You can suspend the process running in the foreground by typing ^Z, i.e.hold down the [Ctrl] key and type [z]. Then to put it in the background, type

% bg

Note: do not background programs that require user interaction e.g. vi

5.4 Listing suspended and background processes

When a process is running, backgrounded or suspended, it will be entered onto a list along with a job number. To examine this list, type

% jobs

An example of a job list could be

[1] Suspended sleep 1000
[2] Running netscape
[3] Running matlab

To restart (foreground) a suspended processes, type

% fg %jobnumber

For example, to restart sleep 1000, type

% fg %1

Typing fg with no job number foregrounds the last suspended process.

5.5 Killing a process

kill (terminate or signal a process)

It is sometimes necessary to kill a process (for example, when an executing program is in an infinite loop)

To kill a job running in the foreground, type ^C (control c). For example, run

% sleep 100
^C

To kill a suspended or background process, type

% kill %jobnumber

For example, run

% sleep 100 &
% jobs

If it is job number 4, type

% kill %4

To check whether this has worked, examine the job list again to see if the process has been removed.

ps (process status)

Alternatively, processes can be killed by finding their process numbers (PIDs) and using kill PID_number

% sleep 1000 &
% ps

PID TT S TIME COMMAND
20077 pts/5 S 0:05 sleep 1000
21563 pts/5 T 0:00 netscape
21873 pts/5 S 0:25 nedit

To kill off the process sleep 1000, type

% kill 20077

and then type ps again to see if it has been removed from the list.

If a process refuses to be killed, uses the -9 option, i.e. type

% kill -9 20077

Note: It is not possible to kill off other users' processes !!!

Summary

Command	Meaning
ls -lag	list access rights for all files
chmod [options] file	change access rights for named file
command &	run command in background
^C	kill the job running in the foreground
^Z	suspend the job running in the foreground
bg	background the suspended job
jobs	list current jobs
fg %1	foreground job number 1
kill %1	kill job number 1
ps	list current processes
kill 26152	kill process number 26152

UNIX Tutorial Four

4.1 Wildcards

The * wildcard

The character * is called a wildcard, and will match against none or more character(s) in a file (or directory) name. For example, in yourunixstuff directory, type

% ls list*

This will list all files in the current directory starting with list....

Try typing

% ls *list

This will list all files in the current directory ending with ....list

The ? wildcard

The character ? will match exactly one character.
So ?ouse will match files like house and mouse, but not grouse. 
Try typing

% ls ?list

4.2 Filename conventions

We should note here that a directory is merely a special type of file. So the rules and conventions for naming files apply also to directories.

In naming files, characters with special meanings such as / * & % , should be avoided. Also, avoid using spaces within names. The safest way to name a file is to use only alphanumeric characters, that is, letters and numbers, together with _ (underscore) and . (dot).

Good filenames	Bad filenames
project.txt	project
my_big_program.c	my big program.c
fred_dave.doc	fred & dave.doc

File names conventionally start with a lower-case letter, and may end with a dot followed by a group of letters indicating the contents of the file. For example, all files consisting of C code may be named with the ending .c, for example, prog1.c . Then in order to list all files containing C code in your home directory, you need only type ls *.c in that directory.

4.3 Getting Help

On-line Manuals

There are on-line manuals which gives information about most commands. The manual pages tell you which options a particular command can take, and how each option modifies the behaviour of the command. Type man command to read the manual page for a particular command.

For example, to find out more about the wc (word count) command, type

% man wc

Alternatively

% whatis wc

gives a one-line description of the command, but omits any information about options etc.

Apropos

When you are not sure of the exact name of a command,

% apropos keyword

will give you the commands with keyword in their manual page header. For example, try typing

% apropos copy

Summary

Command	Meaning
*	match any number of characters
?	match one character
man command	read the online manual page for a command
whatis command	brief description of a command
apropos keyword	match commands with keyword in their man pages