Complete Idiot's Guide to UNIX

Bill Wagner is the co-author of Dynamic HTML Unleashed. He has also been a technical editor on several titles including Sams Teach Yourself CGI in a Week and Sams Teach Yourself Dynamic HTML in a week. He has wide-range programming experience in C/C++, PERL, csh, bash, VB, BASIC, JavaScript, Java, Tcl/Tk and extensive administration experience (NetWare 3.11-4.0, LANtastic, Windows for Workgroups, Windows NT 3.51-4.0, AIX 4.1.x, SunOS 4.1.3, Solaris 2.5-6, and Linux: OpenLinux Base, OpenLinux Server, Red Hat, and Slackware).

Introduction. I. JUST THE BASIC FACTS. 1. I Thought UNIX Lived in Harems. What Is UNIX? A Brief UNIX History. What Is UNIX Good For? How Did UNIX Get Such a Bad Reputation? Can I Run UNIX? So, What's the UNIX Bottom Line? The Least You Need to Know. 2. UNIX Flavors. Can't We All Just Get Along? The UNIX Family Tree. The Least You Need to Know. II. NUTS AND BOLTS. 3. Boot, Lock, and Load. Approaching the Beast. Giving UNIX the Boot. The Least You Need to Know. 4. Getting In. Logging In. The whoami Command: Finding Yourself. Who's Hosting This Party, Anyway? Say, What's in the Box? The finger Command: Giving Yourself the Finger. Giving Others the Finger. The w Command: Finding Out What Users Are Doing. The who Command: Discovering Who's Using Your Machine. The last Command: Finding Out When Users Were Last Logged In. Logging Out. About Your Password. The Least You Need to Know. 5. Surviving Shell Shock. What's a Shell, Anyway? Shells. Shell We Dance? Shell Lingo. The Shell's Cast of Characters: Metacharacters. Filename Metacharacters. Surfing the Pipeline. Sequential Execution of Commands. Conditional Execution of Commands. Cutting UNIX off at the Pass: Redirection. Shell Scripts and Programming. The Least You Need to Know. 6. Manipulating Files and Directories. What's a Directory? Directory Structure in UNIX. Where Am I? I'm Gonna Go Places. Finding Out What's in Your Directory. Investigating Tom, Dick, and Harry. Master of the Universe. The Deadly Asterisk. The Least You Need to Know. 7. Regular and Not-So-Regular Expressions. Get a grep on Yourself, for Goodness Sake! More Complex Regular Expression Searches. The Big Guns: awk. The Least You Need to Know. 8. Opening, Editing, and Saving Files. Text Support. Sending a Single Line of Text to Disk: The echo Command. Big ed. The vi Editor. The pico Editor. Egad! It's emacs! textedit. Visual SlickEdit. The Least You Need to Know. 9. Printing. Printing from X. Troubleshooting Your Print Jobs. The Least You Need to Know. 10. Working with Applications. Before You Start: Is It Really Your Cup of Tea? The Least You Need to Know. III. WORKING IN THE UNIX GUI. 11. Tyrannosaurus X: A Windowing System. About Window Systems in General. Windows That Can Talk: The X Protocol. The Windowing System That Launched a Thousand Chips. The Windowing System with a Thousand Faces. Where X Is Going. The Least You Need to Know. 12. Point and Clique. Your Keyboard. Different Mouse Types. The Mouse and X. Mouse Buttons. Doing Windows: How Windows Work in X. The Least You Need To Know. 13. Running X and X Applications. Starting X. xinit: The X Starter. Xterm: Your Window to the World. Running Applications Inside an Xterm Window. About Menus and Customization. Changing Your Monitor Choices, Video Card, or Resolution. Troubleshooting Applications in X. The Least You Need to Know. 14. Cool Programs for X. xv: A Graphics Tool. The xv Interface. Xgopher. Xarchie. X3270. StarOffice. About X Applications in General. The Least You Need to Know. 15. Help! Help on UNIX. Hey Man! What's Happening? (The Man Page System). When You're Stuck in the GUI: Graphical Help Tools. The Least You Need to Know. IV. UNIX'S NET WORTH. 16. UNIX and the Internet. Out of the Ashes of a War That Never Happened. The Ultimate Network Operating System. Why Use UNIX? Connecting to the Internet. Direct Connections. PPP Connections. Direct Dial Connections. The Least You Need to Know. 17. Email. Return to Sender, Address Unknown: Email Addresses. Email Tools. mail. elm. pine. About Email in General. The Least You Need to Know. 18. The WWW: Browsers for UNIX. A Few Words about Standards. About Availability. The Browsers. The Least You Need to Know. 19. USENET News. What Is USENET? tin: A Newsreader. Using pine to Read News. Using Netscape Communicator to Read News. Welcome to the Jungle: A USENET Primer. The Least You Need to Know. 20. Chatting. What Is Chatting, Anyway? Chat System Types. Chatting One on One with talk. Internet Relay Chat: The Internet's Wild West. The Least You Need to Know. 21. Other Network Services. Say It with Files: File Transfer Protocol. FTP'ing in the Large. telnet: A Remote Login Program. The Least You Need to Know. V. SYSTEM ADMINISTRATION. 22. So You Want to Run a UNIX Server. Getting to the Root of the Problem. Adding and Removing Users. A Few Words about Security. The Least You Need to Know. VI. TROUBLESHOOTING. 23. Common Mistakes. Backups. Corrupting the passwd File. Cruising As Root. Dangerous Commands. Terminal Problems. Xcruciating Peccadilloes. The Least You Need to Know. 24. The 20 Most Common Error Messages and Their Causes. Command Not Found. No Such File or Directory. Argument List Too Long. Cannot Access (Cannot Open, No Such File or Directory). Cross-device Link (Different File System). Login Incorrect. No Manual Entry (No Manual Entry for Command). Host Name Lookup Failure. No Route to Host. Device or Resource Busy. Is a Directory. Nothing Appropriate. Kernel Panic (Unable to Mount Root File System). Permission Denied. Terminal Type Unknown. Not a Directory. Insufficient Arguments. Not Enough Space. Illegal Option. Read-only File System. The Least You Need to Know. VII. REFERENCE. Appendix A. Command Reference. Appendix B. Online Resources. Documentation on Various UNIX Distributions. Patch Sources for Selected UNIX Flavors. USENET Newsgroups. Online Periodicals. Security Literature. Appendix C. Speak Like a Geek: The UNIX Bible. Index.