21 May 2005 - Intro to Linux

Topics

Intro to Linux (by Loren Weith, Josh Locklear, Abdul (QoD))

Attendance

~15

Presentation Resources

Meeting Announcement (txt)

Meeting Flyer (html) (pdf)

Introduction to Linux Guide - complete document (236 pages, PDF)

Introduction to Linux Guide - TALUG excerpted version (49 pages, 2-up, PDF)

Introduction to Linux - An excellent introduction for complete novices. It has a well thought-out structure and each chapter has a summary and exercises.

Knoppix - Complete Debian Linux that runs live from CD, excellent for trying Linux without having to install!

Meeting Notes

There weren't any printed copies of the Guide available, but the PDFs are linked above. If people are interested, they can download and print them out. We also gave away several of the copies of KNOPPIX.

Loren Weith, Josh Locklear and QoD (Abdul) did apparently took turns handling the "Intro to Linux" topic. There were 18 copies of KNOPPIX 3.8.1 on hand, which were used to boot up the 16 computers in room 211 at Stautzenberger College. Abdul was kind enough to type up some notes from the discussion:

At least 15 people attended the meeting and there where at least two new faces at the meeting. Loren Weith presented the first half of the presentation and Josh Locklear presented the second half. Each person at the meeting had a computer running Knoppix and most people followed along with the presentation, while others started to experiment with the operating system. Loren asked what the audience wanted the presentation to be about, either a beginner using Linux from the command line or a beginner using Linux from the GUI. All the people at the presentation favored the command line route.

Many command line tools and topics where discussed at the meeting somewhat randomly (here is the order they were presented in):

• file -> used to display the file type by actually looking at the content of the file. The file command actually queries a database of file signatures called the magic file.
• ls -l -> discussed the layout of the output and what each column represents as an example consider the following output

       -rw-r--r--  1 user  generalgroup  67 21 May 17:01 hello.c

  -The first column (-rw-r--r--) shows the file permission (discussed in detail at the meeting)
  -The second column (1) shows the link count
  -The third column (user) shows the owner of the file (user name)
  -The fourth column (generalgroup) shows the group the user belongs to
  -The fifth column (67) shows the size of the file in bytes
  -The sixth column (21 May 17:01) shows the last modification date
  -The last column (hello.c) shows the file name
  
• mkdir directory -> creates a directory
• touch file_name -> either creates an empty file_name or updates the modification date for file_name
• finger -> looks in the /etc/passwd file and reports some information about the current user you are logged into; such as the shell, home directory, name, etc.
• pwd -> displays the current working directory
• echo * -> lists every file in the current directory (a different way of doing ls)
• $0 -> a variable reserved for the name of the shell you are running.
• echo $VAR -> displays the content of the variable
• ls -F -> appends some characters to file names so you know what they are, for example ls -F puts a / at the end of a directory name, a * at the end of an executable, etc.
• ls -i -> shows the file's inodes
• more -> views output one screen at a time
• less -> does what more does but has some added functionality such as scrolling with the arrow keys and searching the output
• mv file1 file2 -> effectively renames the file
• mv file1 /directory/subdirectory/file2 -> moves the file to /directory/subdirectory/file2
• ln original_file file_link -> hard links the two files, this is a somewhat advanced topic see man page for more information.
• filename vs. /dir/subdir/filename -> the first is a relative filename (relative to your pwd) the latter is an absolute file name
• ln -s original_file file_link -> creates a symbolic link of the file (somewhat similar to a shortcut in windows)
• man command -> views the manual page of almost any command
• lsusb -> displays current usb devices that are plugged into your computer
• lsusb -t -> shows the same usb devices in a tree view
• lspci -> displays current pci devices that are plugged in
• lspci -t -> shouls the same pci devices in a tree mode
• XF86Config/xorg.conf -> all your X settings are stored in this file including mouse settings, keyboard settings, monitor settings, and video card settings
• lsmod -> displays all modules currently loaded by the kernel
• modproble -> lets you load and unload kernel modules (if they are supported by the kernel)
• alsamixer -> a curses mixer window that lets you configure volume settings of your sound card
• alsactl store -> lets you store volume settings
• rm -i -> interactive delete, will ask you if you really wanted to delete the file
• rm -r -> recursive remove, will delete entire directories even if something is in them
• rm -fr -> recursive and force remove (DANGER!)
• inittab -> default runlevel and runlevel settings
• ps -A -> shows all current processes
• cat /proc/filesystems -> lists all the file systems supported by the kernel
• cat /proc/interups -> lists current IRQs
• /etc/fstab -> somewhat advanced, see man fstab
• ifconfig -> similar to ipconfig in windows. shows the current ip settings of your NIC
• head -> by default shows the first 10 lines of a specific file, you could change the line count by using the -n switch
• tail -> similar to head but shows the last 10 lines by default
• cat -> concatenate (meaning dumps out content of file to screen) the file
• find . -iname "*text*" -> traverses through all the directories (relative to your current directory) searching for files that have text in their file name. You could do lots of neat things with this command and it could be combined with other commands such as grep. Check the man page (man find) and xargs.
• grep -> a great tool to search a file for a specific word or sentence. There are books about this command, see man page for a start (similar commands that were not discussed include egrep and sed)
• adduser user_name -> adds a user_name to the users
• passwd user_name -> changes the password of user_name, if you just type passwd it would change the password of the user you are currently logged in under
• id -> prints your user identity
• which -> locates where a specific binary file is located. The command which ls should output /bin/ls

some side notes:

• We met in room 211 and not the usual room we are in.
• There was no network in the room we were in.