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SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Deployment Guide
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14.1 Getting Started with the Bash Shell

In Linux, you can use the command line parallel to the graphical user interface and easily switch between them. To start a terminal window from the graphical user interface in KDE, click the Konsole icon in the panel. In GNOME, click the GNOME Terminal icon in the panel.

The Konsole or the GNOME Terminal window appears, showing the prompt on the first line like in Figure 14-1. The prompt usually shows your login name (in this example, tux), the hostname of your computer (here, knox), and the current path (in this case, your home directory, indicated by the tilde symbol, ~). When you are logged in on a remote computer this information always shows you which system you are currently working on. When the cursor is after this prompt, you can send commands directly to your computer system.

Figure 14-1 Example of a Bash Terminal Window

14.1.1 Entering Commands

A command consists of several elements. The first element is always the actual command, followed by parameters or options. You can type a command and edit it by using , , , , and . You can also add options or correct typing errors. The command is executed when you press .

IMPORTANT: No News Is Good News

The shell is not verbose: in contrast to some graphical user interfaces, it usually does not provide confirmation messages when commands have been executed. Messages only appear in case of problems or errors.

Also keep this in mind for commands to delete objects. Before entering a command like rm for removing a file, you should know if you really want to get rid of the object: it will be deleted irretrievably, without enquiry.

Using Commands without Options

Look at the structure of commands using a simple example: the ls command, used to list the contents of a directory. The command can be used with or without options. Entering the plain ls command shows the contents of the current directory:

Figure 14-2 The ls Command

Unlike in other operating systems, files in Linux may have a file extension, such as .txt, but do not need to have one. This makes it difficult to differentiate between files and folders in this output of the ls. By default, the colors can give you a hint: directories are usually shown in blue, files in black.

Using Commands with Options

A better way to get more details about the contents of a directory is using the ls command with a string of options. Options modify the way a command works so that you can get it to do specific tasks. Options are separated from the command with a blank and are prefixed with a hyphen. The ls -l command shows the contents of the same directory in full detail (long listing format):

Figure 14-3 The ls -l Command

On the left of each object name, information about the object is shown in several columns. The most important are the following: The first column shows the file type of the object (in this example, d for directory or - for normal files). The next nine columns show the user permissions for the object. Columns 11 and 12 show the name of the file owner and the group (in this case, tux and users). Find information about user permissions and the user concept of Linux in Section 14.2, Users and Access Permissions. The next column shows the file size in bytes. Then date and time of the last change are displayed. The last column shows the object name.

If you want to see even more, you can combine two options for the ls command and enter ls -la. The shell now also shows hidden files in the directory, indicated by a dot in front (for example, .hiddenfile).

Getting Help

Nobody is expected to know all options of all commands by heart. If you remember the command name but are not sure about the options, you can enter the command followed by a blank and --help. This --help option exists for many commands. Entering ls --help displays all the options for the ls command.

14.1.2 Linux Directory Structure

Because the shell does not offer a graphical overview of directories and files like the tree view in a file manager, it is useful to have some basic knowlegde of the default directory structure in a Linux system. You can think of directories as electronic folders in which files, programs, and subdirectories are stored. The top level directory in the hierarchy is the root directory, referred to as /. This is the place from which all other directories can be accessed.

Excerpt from a Standard Directory Tree shows the standard directory tree in Linux, with the home directories of the example users yxz, linux, and tux. The /home directory contains the directories in which the individual users can store their personal files.

NOTE: Home Directory in a Network Environment

If you are working in a network environment, your home directory may not be called /home. It can be mapped to any directory in the file system.

The following list provides a brief description of the standard directories in Linux.

Figure 14-4 Excerpt from a Standard Directory Tree

Table 14-1 Overview of a Standard Directory Tree

/

Root directory, starting point of the directory tree

/home

Personal directories of users

/etc

Important files for system configuration

/bin, /sbin

Programs needed early in the boot process (/bin) and for the administrator (/sbin)

/usr, /usr/local

All application programs and local, distribution-independent extensions (/usr/local)

/usr/bin, /usr/sbin

Generally accessible programs (/usr/bin) and reserved for the system administrator ( /usr/sbin)

/usr/share/doc

Various documentation files

/tmp, /var/tmp

Temporary files (do not save files in this directory unless you do not need them)

/opt

Optional software, larger add-on program packages (such as KDE, GNOME, and Netscape)

14.1.3 Working with Directories and Files

To address a certain file or directory, you must specify the path leading to that directory or file. There are two ways to specify a path:

  • The entire (absolute) path from the root directory to the respective file

  • A path starting from the current directory (relative path)

Absolute paths always start with a slash. Relative paths do not have a slash at the beginning.

NOTE: Linux Is Case-Sensitive

Linux distinguishes between uppercase and lowercase in the file system. For example, entering test.txt or Test.txt makes a difference in Linux. Keep this in mind when entering filenames or paths.

To change directories, use the cd command.

  • To switch to your home directory, enter cd.

  • Refer to the current directory with a dot (.). This is mainly useful for other commands (cp, mv, …).

  • The next higher level in the tree is represented by two dots (..). For example, to switch to the parent directory of your current directory, enter cd ...

Examples of Addressing a File

The cd commands in Section 14.1.3, Working with Directories and Files used relative paths. You can use also absolute paths. For example, suppose you want to copy a file from your home directory to a subdirectory of /tmp:

  1. First, from your home directory create a subdirectory in /tmp:

    1. If your current directory is not your home directory, enter cd ~ to switch to it. From anywhere in the file system, you can reach your home directory by entering cd ~.

    2. In your home directory, enter mkdir /tmp/test. mkdir stands for make directory. This command creates a new directory named test in the /tmp directory. In this case, use an absolute path to create the directory.

    3. To check what happened, now enter ls -l /tmp. The new directory test should appear in the list of contents of the /tmp directory.

  2. Now create a new file in your home directory and copy it to the /tmp/test directory by using a relative path.

    1. Enter touch myfile.txt. The touch command with the myfile.txt option creates a new, empty file named myfile.txt in your current directory.

    2. Check this by entering ls -l. The new file should appear in the list of contents.

    3. Enter cp myfile.txt ../tmp/test. This copies myfile.txt to the directory /tmp/test without changing the name of the file.

    4. Check this by entering ls -l /tmp/test. The file myfile.txt should appear in the list of contents for /tmp/test.

To list the contents of home directories of other users, enter ls ~username . In the example directory tree in Figure 14-4, one of the sample users is tux. In this case, ls ~tux would list the contents of the home directory of tux.

NOTE: Handling Blanks in Filenames or Directory Names

If a filename contains a space, either escape the space using a back slash (\) in front of the blank or enclose the filename in single or double quotes. Otherwise Bash interprets a filename like My Documents as the names of two files or directories. The difference between single and double quotes is that variable expansion takes place within double quotes. Single quotes ensure that the shell sees the quoted string literally.

14.1.4 Useful Features of the Shell

Entering commands in Bash can include a lot of typing. In the following, get to know some features of the Bash that can make your work a lot easier and save a lot of typing.

History and Completion

By default, Bash remembers commands you have entered. This feature is called history. To repeat a command that has been entered before, press until the desired command appears at the prompt. Press to move forward through the list of previously entered commands. Use Ctrl + R to search in the history.

You can edit the selected command, for example, changing the name of a file, before you execute the command by pressing . To edit the command line, just move the cursor to the desired position using the arrow keys and start typing.

Completing a filename or directory name to its full length after typing its first letters is another helpful feature of Bash. To do so, type the first letters then press . If the filename or path can be uniquely identified, it is completed at once and the cursor moves to the end of the filename. You can then enter the next option of the command, if necessary. If the filename or path cannot be uniquely identified (because there are several filenames starting with the same letters), the filename or path is only completed up to the point where again several options are possible. You can then obtain a list of them by pressing a second time. After this, you can enter the next letters of the file or path then try completion again by pressing . When completing filenames and paths with the help of , you can simultaneously check whether the file or path you want to enter really exists (and you can be sure of getting the spelling right).

Wild Cards

Another convenience offered by the shell is wild cards for pathname expansion. Wild cards are characters that can stand for other characters. There are three different types of these in Bash:

?

Matches exactly one arbitrary character

*

Matches any number of characters

[set]

Matches one of the characters from the group specified inside the square brackets, which is represented here by the string set. As part of set you can also specify character classes using the syntax [:class:], where a class is one of alnum, alpha, ascii, etc.

Using ! or ^ at the beginning of the group ([!set]) matches one character other than those identified by set.

Assuming that your test directory contains the files Testfile, Testfile1, Testfile2, and datafile.

  • The command ls Testfile? lists the files Testfile1 and Testfile2.

  • The command ls Testfile? lists the files Testfile1 and Testfile2.

  • With ls Test*, the list also includes Testfile.

  • The command ls *fil* shows all the sample files.

  • Use the set wild card to address all sample files whose last character is a number: ls Testfile[1-9] or, using classes, ls Testfile[[:digit:]].

Of the four types of wild cards, the most inclusive one is the asterisk. It could be used to copy all files contained in one directory to another one or to delete all files with one command. The command rm *fil*, for instance, would delete all files in the current directory whose name includes the string fil.

Viewing Files with Less and More

Linux includes two small programs for viewing text files directly in the shell: less and more. Rather than starting an editor to read a file like Readme.txt, simply enter less Readme.txt to display the text in the console window. Use Space to scroll down one page. Use Page Up and Page Down to move forward or backward in the text. To exit less, press Q.

Instead of less, you can also use the older program more. However, it is less convenient because it does not allow you to scroll backwards.

The program less got its name from the the precept that less is more and can also be used to view the output of commands in a convenient way. To see how this works, read Redirection and Pipes.

Redirection and Pipes

Normally, the standard output in the shell is your screen or the console window and the standard input is the keyboard. However, the shell provides functions by which you can redirect the input or the output to another object, such as a file or another command. With the help of the symbols > and <, for example, you can forward the output of a command to a file (output redirection) or use a file as input for a command (input redirection). For example, if you want to write the output of a command such as ls to a file, enter ls -l > file.txt. This creates a file named file.txt that contains the list of contents of your current directory as generated by the ls command. However, if a file named file.txt already exists, this command overwrites the existing file. To prevent this, use >>. Entering ls -l >> file.txt simply appends the output of the ls command to an already existing file named file.txt. If the file does not exist, it is created.

Sometimes it is also useful to use a file as the input for a command. For example, with the tr command, you can replace characters redirected from a file and write the result to the standard output, your screen. Suppose you want to replace all characters t of your file.txt from the example above with x and print this to your screen. Do so by entering tr t x < file.txt.

Just like the standard output, the standard error output is sent to the console. To redirect the standard error output to a file named errors, append 2> errors to the corresponding command. Both standard output and standard error are saved to one file named alloutput if you append >& alloutput.

Using pipelines or pipes is also a sort redirection, although the use of the pipe is not constrained to files. With a pipe (|), you can combine several commands, using the output of one command as input for the next command. For example, to view the contents or your current directory in less, enter ls | less. This only makes sense if the normal output with ls would be too lengthy. For instance, if you view the contents of the dev directory with ls /dev, you only see a small portion in the window. View the entire list with ls /dev | less.

14.1.5 Archives and Data Compression

Now that you have already created a number of files and directories, consider the subject of archives and data compression. Suppose you want to have the entire test directory packed in one file that you can save on a USB stick as a backup copy or send by e-mail. To do so, use the command tar (for tape archiver). With tar --help, view all the options for the tar command. The most important of these options are explained here:

-c

(for create) Create a new archive.

-t

(for table) Display the contents of an archive.

-x

(for extract) Unpack the archive.

-v

(for verbose) Show all files on screen while creating the archive.

-f

(for file) Choose a filename for the archive file. When creating an archive, this option must always be given as the last one.

To pack the test directory with all its files and subdirectories into an archive named testarchive.tar, do the following:

  1. Open a shell.

  2. Use cd to your home directory where the test directory is located.

  3. Enter tar -cvf testarchive.tar test. The -c option creates the archive, making it a file as directed by -f. The -v option lists the files as they are processed.

  4. View the contents of the archive file with tar -tf testarchive.tar.

The test directory with all its files and directories has remained unchanged on your hard disk. To unpack the archive, enter tar -xvf testarchive.tar, but do not try this yet.

For file compression, the obvious choice is gzip or, for a even better compression ratio, bzip2. Just enter gzip testarchive.tar (or bzip2 testarchive.tar, but gzip is used in this example). With ls, now see that the file testarchive.tar is no longer there and that the file testarchive.tar.gz has been created instead. This file is much smaller and therefore much better suited for transfer via e-mail or storage on a USB stick.

Now, unpack this file in the test2 directory created earlier. To do so, enter cp testarchive.tar.gz test2 to copy the file to that directory. Change to the directory with cd test2. A compressed archive with the .tar.gz extension can be unzipped with the gunzip command. Enter gunzip testarchive.tar.gz, which results in the file testarchive.tar, which then needs to be extracted or untarred with tar -xvf testarchive.tar. You can also unzip and extract a compressed archive in one step with tar -xvf testarchive.tar.gz (adding the -z option is no longer required). With ls, you can see that a new test directory has been created with the same contents as your test directory in your home directory.

14.1.6 Cleaning Up

After this crash course, you should be familiar with the basics of the Linux shell or command line. You may want to clean up your home directory by deleting the various test files and directories using the rm and rmdir commands. In Section 14.3, Important Linux Commands, find a list of the most important commands and a brief description of their functions.

SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop Deployment Guide
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