Introduction to Unix

Class 1

* Notes adapted by Alexey Onufriev from previous work by other members of the CS
faculty at Virginia Tech
What is Unix?

 A modern computer operating system

 Operating System
 “a program that acts as an intermediary between a user of the
computer and the computer hardware”
 Software that manages your computer’s resources (files,
programs, disks, network)
 Examples: Windows, MacOSX, Solaris, BSD, Linux (e.g.
Mandrake, Red Hat, Slackware, SUSE)
 Modern
 Stable, flexible, configurable, allows multiple users
and programs

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Why Learn Unix?
 Will make you a better computer scientist
 UNIX is a building block for many CS concepts
 Open source and stable (no viruses, worms, etc)
 Used in many scientific and industrial settings.
 Huge number of free and well-written software programs
 Excellent programming environment. Different paradigm.
 Roughly 65% of the world’s web servers are Linux/Unix
machines running Apache.
 Prerequisite to many other CS courses to follow (Operating
Systems, Numerical methods, etc. )

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Example: Unix Open Office

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Brief History of Unix
 Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie originally
developed the earliest versions of Unix at Bell Labs for
internal use in the 1970s
 Simple and elegant
 Meant for programmers and experts
 Written in a high-level language instead of assembly
language
 Small portion written in assembly language (kernel)
 Remaining code written in C on top of the kernel

 http://www.bell-labs.com/history/unix/

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Brief History of Linux
 Andrew Tanenbaum, a Dutch professor developed MINIX to
teach the inner workings of operating systems to his students
 In 1991 at the University of Helsinki, Linus Torvalds, inspired by
Richard Stallman’s GNU free software project and the knowledge
presented in Tanenbaum’s operating system, created Linux, an
open-source, Unix-like operating system
 Over the last decade, the effort of thousands of open-source
developers has resulted in the establishment of Linux as a stable,
functional operating system
 http://www.linuxgazette.com/node/9721

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Unix Variants (Flavours)
 Two main threads of development
 Berkeley software distribution (http://www.bsd.org)
 Unix System Laboratories (http://www.unix.org)
 Sun: SunOS, Solaris
 SGI: Irix
 FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD
 Hewlett-Packard: HP-UX
 Apple: OSX (based on BSD)
 Linux (many flavours)

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Layers in a Unix-based System

User Interface Users

Standard Utility Programs

Library Interface (shells, editors, compilers, etc.)
user
mode
Standard Library
System calls (open, close, read, write, etc.)

Unix Operating System

(process/memory management, file system, I/O) kernel

Hardware
(CPU, memory, disks, terminals, etc.)

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Unix Structure
 The kernel is the core of the Unix operating system,
controlling the system hardware and performing
various low-level functions. Other parts of a Unix
system (including user programs) call on the kernel to
perform services for them.
 The shell accepts user commands and is responsible
for seeing that they are carried out.
 The filesystem organizes all of the information on the
computer and provides access to it for programs.

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Unix Structure (cont.)

 Many hundreds utility programs or tools are

supplied with the Unix system. These utilities
(or commands) support a variety of tasks such
as copying files, editing text, performing
calculations, and developing software.
 This course will introduce a limited number of
these utilities and tools, focusing on those that
aid in software development.

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Getting Started

 Logging in to a Unix machine requires an

account on that system. Admin = root.
 After logging in, some information about the
system will be displayed, followed by a shell
prompt, where commands may be entered
 $
 %
 #
 username@hostname>
 hostname%

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The Shell

 The shell is the program you use to

send commands to the Unix system
 Some commands are a single word
 who
 date
 ls
 Others use additional information
 more textfile
 ls –l /home/onufriev

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Command Syntax
 Commands must be entered exactly
 Be careful! Some commands can be very destructive. (e.g.
rm junk* vs. rm junk *) NO RECOVERY IN UNIX.
ask your TA how to safeguard against accidental file
removal (alias rm to mv )
 Syntax: command options argument(s)
 Options modify a command’s execution
 Arguments indicate on what a command should act (often
filenames)

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Example Commands: ls, cd, mkdir

 ls –l // shows content of current directory + file attributes

 ls –a
 ls –la
 cd // move one level up in the directory tree

 mkdir MYDIRECORY// create directory MYDIRECTORY

 cd MYDIRECTORY
 touch myfile // creates an empty file myfile
 ls –l myfile

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If you don’t see a shell prompt…
 A program is probably running
 If you see a special program prompt, try to quit the
program (quit, bye, exit)
 If you see nothing, you can usually
 Stop the program with CTRL-z (program will wait until started
again by “bg &” )
 Interrupt the program with CTRL-c (program will usually die)

Absolutely NO MS WINDOWS in this class, BUT you CAN USE

PUTTY and WinSCP windows programs to connect to and
transfer between a UNIX machine and your windows machine.

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Ending your session

 Always log out when you are done

 Use the exit command to log out of a shell
 Note: If you are running in a windowing
environment, logging out of a shell only ends
that shell. You must also log out of the
windowing system, typically selecting an
option from a menu.

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