LINUX OS Manual

LINUX OS Manual
for
Students, faculty and Staff

(Ravi K. Walia)
Assistant Professor & Incharge
Computer & Instrumentation Centre
Dr. Y. S. Parmar University of Horticulture & Forestry,
Nauni Solan INDIA (HP)

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PREFACE

This document has been prepared for students, faculty, and staff at Dr. Y. S.
Parmar University of Horticulture & Forestry, Nauni, Solan (HP) India.

Linux, based on the Unix is one of most powerful and versatile operating system.
A research team at AT&T’s Bell Labs developed Unix in the late 1960s and early
1970s with a focus on creating an operating system that would be accessible and
secure for multiple users. In 1991, Linus Torvalds released the Linux kernel as
free, open-source software. Open source means that the code is fully visible, and
can be modified and redistributed.

Linux is used in most of the servers like web Server, Email Server, DNS Server,
File Servers, workstations, home user PC, client and even more than 80% of
supercomputers.

Most of Linux version has GUI like MS Windows, however to explore the full
capability of Linux user need to learn the command mode. Each command in
Linux has many options which effect the output. This manual cover main features
of Linux, basic concepts, file system and security access, most of the commands
with example and vi editor. To explore more about command such as attribute and
parameters user can use inbuilt help using man command.

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Feature of Linux

• Written in high level language “C”

• Use hierarchical file system allows easy file maintenance
• Use consistent file format : byte stream
• Multiuser and multi-process system
• Use round robin scheduling with multilevel feedback. Process aging is employed
to prevent starvation
• Memory management employ swapping and demand paging

BASIC CONCEPTS

Kernel: The kernel is the heart of the operating system. It interacts with the hardware
and most of the tasks like memory management, task scheduling and file management.

Shell: The shell is the utility that processes your requests. When you type in a
command at your terminal, the shell interprets the command and calls the program that
you want. The shell uses standard syntax for all commands. C Shell, Bourne Shell and
Korn Shell are the most famous shells.

Commands and Utilities: There are various commands and utilities which you can
make use of in your day to day activities. cp, mv, cat and grep, etc. are few examples
of commands and utilities.

Files and Directories: All the data of Linux is organized into files. All files are then
organized into directories. These directories are further organized into a tree-like
structure called the filesystem. There are three basic types of files –

Ordinary Files − An ordinary file is a file on the system that contains data, text,
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or program instructions. In this tutorial, you look at working with ordinary files.

Directories − Directories store both special and ordinary files. For users
familiar with Windows or Mac OS, Unix directories are equivalent to folders.

Special Files − Some special files provide access to hardware such as hard
drives, CD-ROM drives, modems, and Ethernet adapters. Other special files
are similar to aliases or shortcuts and enable you to access a single file using
different names.

SYSTEM BOOTUP

If you have a computer which has the Linux operating system installed in it, then you
simply need to turn on the system to make it live.

As soon as you turn on the system, it starts booting up and finally it prompts you to log
into the system, which is an activity to log into the system and use it for your day-to-
day activities.

Login Linux
When you first connect to a Linux system, you usually see a prompt such as the
following:

login:

To log in
• Have your userid (user identification) and password ready. Contact your
system administrator if you don't have these yet.

• Type your userid at the login prompt, then press ENTER. Your userid is case-
sensitive, so be sure you type it exactly as your system administrator has
instructed.

• Type your password at the password prompt, then press ENTER. Your
password is also case-sensitive.

• If you provide the correct userid and password, then you will be allowed to

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enter into the system. Read the information and messages that comes up on
the screen, which is as follows.

You will be provided with a command prompt (sometime called the $ prompt or %
prompt) where you type all your commands.

Linux Command Structure:

The linux command structure is
command [ -options] [arguments]
The options are specified by “-“ followed by one letter per option. The option change
the output pattern of command. Argument specifies that the command will work on the
argument supplied if any.
e.g. $ ls ;List information about directories & files of current working directory
$ ls –l ;display long list contents of current working directory
$ ls –l /etc ;display long list contents of directory /etc

List of important command in Linux:

Command Example Explanation

cal Display calendar

$ cal Display calendar of current month and current

year

$ cal 2016 Display the calendar of year 2016

$ cal 4 2016 Display the calendar of April, 2016

clear $ clear Clear the screen

pwd $ pwd Print working directory. When you first login,

your current working directory is your home
directory. Your home directory has the same

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name as your user-name

date $ date Display system date and system time

who $ who Display users who are currently working on

the system

$ who am i Display your login id

$who –q Display number of users currently working

on the system

banner $ banner UHF Display text in the form of banner

man Display manual/help of a command, use q

to quit from help

$ man cal Display manual/help of a command cal

ls List contents of directory

$ ls List the contents of current working directory

excluding hidden files (File begning with dot
(.) are hidden file)

$ ls -a List all the files in current working directory

including hidden files

$ ls –l Long Listing of files

$ls /etc List the contents of directory /etc

logout $ logout Logout from the system

or
$ ^+d

shutdown $ shutdown shutdown/ power off the system

or
$ init 0

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reboot $ reboot Reboot the system

mkdir Make a directory

$mkdir UHF Make directory UHF under current directory

$mkdir /UHF/COH Make directory COH & COF under /UHF

/UHF/COF

cd Change the current working director

$ cd / Make root (/) as current working directory

$ cd /UHF/COH Change directory to /UHF/COH

$ cd FLS Change to subdirectory FLS under current

working directory

$ cd .. Go one step up in the directory tree

$ cd ./COF Go to directory COF under current directory

$ cd Change to home directory

cp To make a copy of a file

$ cp abc xyz Copy file abc to xyz

$cp abc /xyz Make copy of file abc in the directory xyz with
name abc (if directory xyz exist) else make
copy of file abc with name xyz in the root
directory (/).

mv Move a file from one directory to other or

change the name of a file in the same
directory

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$ mv abc xyz Change the name of file abc to xyz

$ mv abc /etc Move the file abc from current directory to

/etc directory

rm Remove a file or directory

$ rm abc Remove file abc under present working

directory

$ rm /etc/xyz Remove file xyz from directory /etc

$ rm –r /etc/abc Remove directory abc form /etc . Remove

directory even if it is not empty.

rmdir Remove directory (directory must be empty

ie. Is should not have any subdirectory or file)

$ rm abc Remove empty directory abc from present

working directory

$ rm /etc/abc Remove empty directory abc from /etc

history $ history List all previously executed commands

!n $ !4 Recall 4th command

$ !-4 Recall the 4th most recent command

cat Concatenate files: take screen as standard
input output

$ cat myfile Display the content of myfile on the screen

$ cat myfile1 Display the content of myfile1 and myfile2 on

myfile2 the screen

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$ cat myfile1 Concatenate( Combine) files myfile1 and

myfile2 > myfile3 myfile2 and create a new file myfile3

$cat >newfile Create a new file with name newfile by taking

input from standard input and redirecting the
Some text….
output to file newfile
Sometext…
Ctrl+d

more Display the contents of a file on the screen., a

page at a time. Press the [space-bar] if you
want to see another page, and type [q] if you
want to quit reading.

$ more myfile Display myfile on the screen

less Display the contents of a file on the screen., a
page at a time. Press the [space-bar] if you
want to see another page, and type [q] if you
want to quit reading.

$ less myfile Display myfile on the screen

head Display first few line of file

$ head myfile The head command writes the first ten lines
of a file to the screen.

$ head -12 myfile Display all line starting from line 12 on the
screen

tail Display last few line of a file

$ tail myfile The tail command writes the last ten lines of a
file to the screen.

$ tail -8 myfile Display the last 8 lines on the screen

pg Display file in formatted form with header,

footer, page number etc.
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Display fiel abc in formatted form

$ pg abc

lpr or lp Print the file on printer

$ lprt myfile Print the file myfile

Print the file myfile with formatted output

$ pg myfile | lpr

lpq $lpq List print queue

cancel $cancel abc-123 Terminate print request (abc-123) from lp

command

wc Count characters, words and lines in a text file

Display number of characters, words and line

$wc filename
in a text file

$wc –c filename Display number of characters in file filename

$wc –w filename Display number of words in file filename

Display number of lines in file filename

$wc –l filename

$wc –wl filename Display number of words and number of lines

in file filename

> Used to redirect the output

Redirect the output of cat command to file xyz,

$cat abc > xyz
First remove the content of file xyz if any

>> To append the content of redirection

$cat xyz >>newfile Append the content of file xyz at the end of
newfile

< Used to redirect the input

$ sort < abc Sort the file abc and display the content of
screen

Redirect the input from file abc and redirect the

$ sort <abc > sabc
output to file sabc

sort Sort/arrange the contents

sort abc Sort the file on string/ascii code

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sort –n abc Sort the file numerically

| Piping is used to send output of one command

as input of another command

Send the output of who command i.e list of

$who | sort
user currently working on the system and
send the output to sort command which sort
the results. Thus instead of storing
intermediate results in a file (abc.txt) as below
$who >abc.txt
$sort >abc.txt
We use piping $who |sort

ps To see information about your processes, with

their associated PID and status, type

To see information about user own

$ ps
processes

To see information about all user processes

$ ps -e

kill kill (terminate or signal a process)

To kill process with PID 123

$ kill 123

If a process refuses to be killed, uses the -9

$kill -9 145
option to forcibly kill process.

& To run process in the background

Run the ls –l process in the background

$ ls –l / >xyz &

chown Change the owner of file. NOTE: The super

user, root, has the unrestricted capability to
change the ownership of any file but normal
users can change the ownership of only those
files that they own.

Change the owner of file myfile to rkw

$ chwon rkw myfile

chgrp Change group name of file

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Change group name to group2 for file myfile

$chgrp group2
myfile
Jobs List the current jobs
$ jobs

df The dfcommand reports on the space left on

$ df
the file system

du The ducommand outputs the number of

$du
kilobyes used by each subdirectory

Display only summery of all files and

$ du –s *
directories

diff This command compares the contents of two

$ df file1 file2
files and displays the differences

This searches through the directories for files

and directories with a given name, date, size
find $ find . -name "*.txt" To search for all fies with the extention .txt,
-print starting at the current directory (.) and
working through all sub-directories, then
printing the name of the file to the screen

file $ file * fileclassifies the named files according to the

type of data they contain, for example ascii
(text), pictures, compressed data, etc..

fsck $ fsck To check the file system for any error

$ fsck –y Try to recover from errors in file system

write For online communication
$ write user1 Communicate online with user user1
$ write user1 tty06 Communicate online with user user1 on
terminal tty06
mesg Allow or deny online communication

$ mesg –n Deny online communication

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$ mesg –y Allow online communication on

mail For offline communication to read or write
message
$ mail To read mail

$ mail user6 To Send mmessage/mail to user with user id

Welcome to UHF user6
Welcome to UHF
......some text
Ctrl+d
ping $ ping hostname The ping command sends an echo request
to a host available on the network. Using this
or command, you can check if your remote
$ ping ip-address host is responding well or not.

finger $ finger user1 The finger command displays information

about users on a given host. The host can
be either local or remote.

netstat $ netstat Display network status: network

connections, routing tables, interface
statistics, masquerade connections, and
multicast memberships

nice/renice Runs a program with modified scheduling

priority
useradd Adds accounts to the system

usermod Modifies account attributes

userdel Deletes accounts from the system

groupadd Adds groups to the system

groupmod Modifies group attributes

groupdel Removes groups from the system

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File system security (access rights)

Linux use the inverted tree type structure (like windows) for directories as shown below

Following are the directories that exist on the major versions of linux –
Directory Description
/ This is the root directory which should contain only the directories
needed at the top level of the file structure

/bin This is where the executable files are located. These files are
available to all users

/dev These are device drivers

/etc Supervisor directory commands, configuration files, disk configuration

files, valid user lists, groups, ethernet, hosts, where to send critical
messages

/lib Contains shared library files and sometimes other kernel-related files

/boot Contains files for booting the system

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/home Contains the home directory for users and other accounts

/mnt Used to mount other temporary file systems, such as cdrom and
floppy for the CD-ROM drive and floppy diskette drive, respectively

/proc Contains all processes marked as a file by process number or other

information that is dynamic to the system

/tmp Holds temporary files used between system boots

/usr Used for miscellaneous purposes, and can be used by many users.
Includes administrative commands, shared files, library files, and
others

/var Typically contains variable-length files such as log and print files and
any other type of file that may contain a variable amount of data

/sbin Contains binary (executable) files, usually for system administration.

For example, fdisk and ifconfig utilities

/kernel Contains kernel files

Use the following long listing filename command

$ ls -l

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

-rw-rw-r-- 1 coh uhf 166255 Aug 9 2007 myfile1

drwxr-xr-x 11 cof uhf 4096 May29 2007 myfile2

Here is the information about all the listed columns –

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Column 1: Represents the file type and the permission given on the file Every file
line begins with a d, -, or l. These characters indicate the type of the file that's listed.

Prefix Description

- Regular file, such as an ASCII text file, binary executable, or hard link

b Block special file. Block input/output device file such as a physical hard
drive

c Character special file. Raw input/output device file such as a physical

hard drive

d Directory file that contains a listing of other files and directories

l Symbolic link file. Links on any regular file

p Named pipe. A mechanism for interprocess communications

s Socket used for interprocess communication

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) (coh in the above example);
the middle group gives the permissions for the group of people to whom the
file (or directory) belongs (uhf 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
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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.

Column 2: Represents the number of memory blocks taken by the file or directory.

Column 3: Represents the owner of the file. This is the Linux user who created this
file.

Column 4: Represents the group of the owner. Every Linux user will have an
associated group.

Column 5: Represents the file size in bytes.

Column 6: Represents the date and the time when this file was created or modified
for the last time.

Column 7: Represents the file or the directory name.

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
u : user g : group o : other a : all
r : read w : write /delete x : execute/ accessdirectory
+ : add permission - : take away permission

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

$ chmod go-rwx myfile

Grep Command

Grep is one of many standard linux utilities. It searches files for specified words or
patterns.

$ grep “string1” filename List the lines containing string1 in file

$ grep “string1” filename* List the lines containing string1 in multiple

files

$ grep –i “string1” filename Case insensitive search

$ grep “^string1” filename List the lines containing string1 in the

beginning

$ grep “string1$” filename List the lines containing string1 in the end

$ grep –c “string1” filename Give count of lines containing string1 in file

$ grep –v “string1” filename List the lines not containing string1 in file

$ grep “string1” * Search all the files in current directory

$ grep –r “string1” * Search all the files in current directory and

all sub directory

$ grep –l “string1” * List on the file names containing string1

$ grep –o “is.*this” filename List only the match string of pattern

$ grep –n “string1” filename Show also the line number

$ find . –name “*.mp3” | grep –i JayZ | Find all mp3 file then find file from JayZ
grep –vi “remix” then remove remix file from the list

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vi editor commands
Use the vi editor to create ordinary files on any linux system. You simply need to give
the following command

$vi abc

The above command will open a file with the given filename. Now, press the key i to
come into the edit mode. Once you are in the edit mode, you can start writing your
content in thefile.

Press the key esc to come out of the edit mode. Press two keys Shift + ZZ together to
come out of the file completely

Cursor Movement Commands Editing Commands

h Left A Append to end of current line

j Down i Insert before cursor

k Up I Insert at beginning of line

l Right o Open line above cursor

w Forward one word O Open line below cursor

b Back one word ESC End of insert mode

0 Start of current line Backspace Move back one character

$ End of current line Ctrl-U Delete current line

Ctrl-F Forward one screen cw Change word

Ctrl-B Back one screen cc Change line

Ctrl-G Display line number of cursor C Change from current position to end
of line
nG Move cursor to line number n
dd Delete current line
:n Move cursor to line number n
ndd Delete n lines
G Move to last line in file
D Delete remainder of line

dw Delete word
File Handling
J Join two lines
:w Write file

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:w! Write file (ignoring warnings) p Insert buffer after cursor

:w! file Overwrite file (ignoring P Insert buffer before cursor

warnings)
rx Replace character with x
:wq Write file and quit
Rtext Replace text beginning at cursor
:q Quit
u Undo last change
:q! Quit (even if changes not
saved) U Restore current line

:w file Write file as file, leaving x Delete current cursor position

original untouched X Delete back one character
ZZ Quit, only writing file if nX Delete previous n characters
changed
y Copy current line to new buffer
:x Quit, only writing file if
changed yy Copy current line

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