UNIX For Dummies Quick Reference

Unlike her peers in that 40-something bracket, Margaret Levine Young was exposed to computers at an early age. In high school, she got into a computer club known as the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S., a group of kids who spent Saturdays in a barn fooling around with three antiquated computers. She stayed in the field through college against her better judgment and despite her brother John's presence as a graduate student in the computer science department. Margy graduated from Yale and went on to become one of the first microcomputer managers in the early 1980s at Columbia Pictures, where she rode the elevator with big stars whose names she wouldn't dream of dropping here. Since then, Margy (www.gurus.com/margy) has coauthored more than 20 computer books about the topics of the Internet, UNIX, WordPerfect, Microsoft Access, and (stab from the past) PC-File and Javelin, including The Internet For Dummies, 6th Edition, and WordPerfect 7 For Windows 95 For Dummies (all from IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.). She loves her husband, Jordan; her kids, Meg and Zac; gardening; chickens; reading; and anything to do with eating. Margy and her husband also run Great Tapes for Kids (www.greattapes.com) from their home in the middle of a cornfield near Middlebury, Vermont. John R. Levine was a member of the same computer club Margy was in -- before high school students, or even high schools, had computers. He wrote his first program in 1967 on an IBM 1130 (a computer almost as fast as your modern digital wristwatch, only more difficult to use). He became an official system administrator of a networked computer at Yale in 1975 and has been working in the computer and network biz since 1977. He got his company on to Usenet (see Part IV) early enough that it appears in a 1982 Byte magazine article in a map of Usenet, which then was so small that the map fit on half a page. He used to spend most of his time writing software, although now he mostly writes books (including UNIX For Dummies and Internet Secrets, both from IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.) because it's more fun and he can do so at home in the hamlet of Trumansburg, New York, where he holds the exalted rank of sewer commissioner and offers free samples to visitors and plays with his young daughter when he's supposed to be writing. He also does a fair amount of public speaking. (See www.iecc.com/johnl.) He holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University, but please don't hold that against him.

Introduction: How to Use This Book 1

What’s in This Book 2

Conventions Used in This Book 2

The Cast of Icons 3

Write to Us! 3

Part I: Commanding UNIX Using the Shell 5

Directories 6

Environment Variables 6

Filenames 7

Help with Commands 7

Identifying Your Shell 8

Pathnames 8

Quoting Characters on the Command Line 9

Redirecting with Pipes and Filters 9

Shell Prompts 10

Special Characters and What They Do 11

Startup Files 13

Typing Commands 13

Wildcards 14

Part II: UNIX Commands 15

alias 16

at 16

awk 18

bash 18

bc 19

bg 20

cal 20

calendar 21

cancel 22

cat 22

cd 23

chgrp 24

chmod 25

chown 26

clear 26

cmp 27

compress 27

cp 28

cpio 29

crontab 31

csh 32

date 33

df 34

diff 34

diff3 36

dircmp 36

du 37
echo 38

ed 38

elm 39

emacs 39

env 39

ex 39

exit 39

fg 40

file 41

find 42

finger 44

ftp 45

grep 45

gunzip 47

gzip 48

head 49

help 49

history 50

id 51

irc 51

jobs 51

kill 52

ksh 53

ln 53

lp 55

lpq 57

lpr 57

lprm 58

lpstat 59

ls 60

lynx 62

mail 62

man 62

mesg 63

mkdir 64

more 64

mv 65

nice 67

nn 67

pack 68

passwd 68

pico 69

pine 69

pr 69

ps 71

pwd 73

rcp 73

red 73

rehash 73

rlogin 74

rm 74

rmdir 75

rn 76

rsh 76

script 76

sdiff 77

sed 77

set 78

setenv 79

sh 80

sleep 81

sort 82

spell 83

stty 84

tail 85

talk 86

tar 86

tee 88

telnet 89

time 89

tin 89

touch 90

trn 90

troff 91

tty 92

umask 92

unalias 93

uname 94

uncompress 95

uniq 95

unpack 96

uucp 97

uudecode 98

uuencode 99

vacation 100

vi 100

wall 100

wc 101

who 102

write 102

zcat 103

Part III: Using X Window Managers 105

Anatomy of a Window 106

Changing the Window Size 106

Exiting the Window Manager 107

Keyboard Shortcuts 108

Motif 108

FVWM 108

Maximizing a Window 109

Minimizing (Iconifying) a Window 109

Moving a Window 110

Opening a Window in an Obsolete but Easy Way 110

Opening Windows in a User-Friendly Way 110

Restoring a Window 111

Restoring a Window from an Icon 111

Selecting Several Things with Your Mouse 111

Switching Windows 112

The Window Menu 112

Working with the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) 114

CDE Applications 114

CDE Windows 115

The Front Panel 115

Front Panel Subpanels 116

Part IV: Using Text Editors 119

Using the ed Text Editor 120

Starting ed 120

Getting out of ed 120

ed commands 120

Using the emacs Text Editor 122

Starting emacs 122

Getting out of emacs 122

emacs commands 122

emacs commands for editing multiple files 124

Using the pico Text Editor 124

Starting pico 125

Getting out of pico 125

pico commands 125

Using the VI Text Editor 126

Starting VI 126

Getting Out of VI 127

vi Commands 127

vi Commands in Input Mode 130

Part V: Sending and Receiving Electronic Mail 131

Addressing Your Mail 132

elm 132

Sending a message 132

Reading your messages 133

Printing a message 133

Saving a message 134

Exiting the program 134

Changing your elm options 134

Getting help 135

Command line options 135

Mail 136

Sending a message 136

Reading your messages 137

Forwarding a message 137

Printing a message 138

Saving a message 138

Exiting the mail program 138

Command line options 138

Pine 139

Sending a message 139

Reading your messages 140

Replying to a message 141

Forwarding a message 141

Printing a message 141

Saving a message 142

Deleting a message 142

Adding an address to an address book 143

Retrieving an address from an address book 143

Exiting the program 143

Changing options 144

Getting help 144

Sending Mail Using Other Mail Programs 144

Part VI: Connecting to Other Computers 147

FTP 148

Connecting to a remote system 148

Connecting by using anonymous FTP 148

Quitting FTP 149

Listing the files in a directory 149

Moving to other directories 150

Retrieving files 150

Retrieving groups of files 151

Decompressing files that you have retrieved 151

Downloading retrieved files to your PC 152

Sending files to a remote system using FTP 153

Summary of FTP commands 154

IRC: Chatting with Others on the Net 154

Starting IRC 155

Finding IRC channels 155

Joining an IRC channel 156

Quitting IRC 156

Getting help with IRC commands 156

Chatting by using IRC commands 156

Summary of IRC commands 157

Having an IRC private conversation 158

rcp 158

Copying files from a remote computer 158

Copying all the files in a directory 159

rlogin and rsh 159

Connecting to a remote computer 159

Disconnecting from a remote computer 160

Running commands on a remote computer by using rsh 160

Logging in automatically by using rlogin and rsh 161

telnet 162

Connecting to a remote computer 162

Disconnecting from a remote computer 162

Part VII: Finding Resources on the Net 163

Internet Explorer 164

Lynx 164

Going directly to a page 164

Going back to a previous page 165

Searching within Web pages 165

Key summary 165

Netscape 166

Starting up 166

Going to a new page 166

Going back to a previous page 167

Finding places to go in Netscape 167

Printing a page 167

Saving a file 168

Freeing disk space 168

Quitting Netscape 168

Resource Indexes 168

Part VIII: Usenet Newsgroups 171

Netiquette: Avoiding Getting Flamed 172

Reading Usenet Newgroups with trn 172

Starting your newsreader 172

Changing the order in which newsgroups appear 174

Choosing which new newsgroups to subscribe to 174

Dealing with rot-13 articles 175

Dealing with shar files 175

Dealing with uuencoded files 175

Exiting the newsreader 176

Finding articles on specific topics 176

Finding a newsgroup 177

Getting help 177

Posting a new article 178

Reading articles 179

Replying to and following up an article 180

Sending an e-mail reply 181

Posting a news follow-up 181

Saving an article 181

Selecting newsgroups to read 182

Selecting the threads that you want to read 182

Skipping over a newsgroup 184

Skipping an uninteresting or offensive article 184

Skipping unread articles 184

Unsubscribing to a newsgroup 185

Understanding Newsgroup Names 185

Glossary: Techie Talk 187

Index 201