The Role of UNIX

• Origins, current uses and applications
• The UNIX family: Solaris, HP-UX, AIX, Tru64, Linux, BSD and others

Interacting with UNIX

Graphical user interfaces

• The Common Desktop Environment (CDE)
• GNOME, Java Desktop System, others

The command line interface

• Launching the CDE Terminal Emulator
• Entering commands to the shell

Browsing online documentation

• Displaying man pages
• Accessing Web reference sources

Managing Files

Essential file housekeeping tools

• Copying: cp
• Renaming: mv
• Removing: rm
• Linking: ln
• Editing: vi
• Printing: lp, lpr

Displaying and interpreting file attributes

• Listing files with ls and ls -l
• Identifying file type, owner, group, size, modification time and index number

Establishing access permissions with chmod

• Symbolic notation
• Octal notation

Navigating Directories

The UNIX directory hierarchy

• Home, current and parent directories
• Root directory and subdirectories

Maintaining directories

• Changing directory with cd
• Making and removing directories

Locating files with find

• Searching using file attributes
• Operating on found files

Working with the KornShell

Command history facility

• Listing past commands
• Recalling and editing a previous command

Employing KornShell tips and tricks

• Filename "wildcards": * , ? , [ ]
• Command substitution: `...`

Personalising your shell

• Defining command aliases
• Updating the start-up scripts
• Setting shell variables and options

Accessing UNIX Servers from UNIX and Windows

Logging in to a remote server

• Secure Shell
• PuTTY
• Telnet
• Cygwin
• Others

Uploading and downloading files

• Secure FTP
• scp
• FTP
• WinSCP
• Others

Taming Information with Filters

The UNIX tool-building philosophy

• Filtering data streams through pipelines
• Redirecting standard input, output and error streams

Extracting and restructuring data

• Searching: grep
• Sorting: sort
• Editing: sed
• Trimming: head and tail
• Selecting: awk
• Counting: wc

Matching patterns with regular expressions

• Metacharacter examples with grep
• Substituting patterns with sed
• Refining selections with awk

Developing and Executing Scripts

Writing a simple script

• Storing commands in a file
• Marking the file as executable

Applying special variables

• Parsing command line arguments
• Examining command exit status

Controlling flow of execution

• Iterating through loops with for and while
• Testing conditions with if/else
• Choosing alternatives with case

Monitoring and Customising Your System

Administering users and groups

• Adding and changing a user account
• Assigning users to groups

Querying UNIX system status

• Measuring disc space usage
• Initiating and terminating daemons