Angling may be said to be so like the mathematics,

that it can never be fully learnt.

IZAAK WALTON
So is UNIX.
K. Nandakumar

Appendix C

Some basic unix commands

C.1

Introduction to the shell and the desktop

In a command line oriented, interactive environment, a command shell

(which is a program or a process) accepts a command from the keyboard,
passes it to the operating system for execution, prints out any error or informational messages generated by the command and displays a prompt
string indicating the readiness to accept another command. There are
several shells available under AIX. The Kron shell or ksh is one of the
most powerful shells and is the default shell on the AIX machines maintained by the department of chemical engineering.
In the GUI oriented environment, the equivalent of a command shell
is the desktop which organizes various tools and application programs
such as file manager, program manager, printer manager, etc. as objects
accessible via icons. The interaction takes place through dialogue boxes
and forms that must be completed. Program execution begins simply by
double clicking on the appropriate icons.
If you have a good reason to change your default shell to something
other that ksh, you can do so with the chsh command,
user@machine:dir> chsh
This command will display your current shell, and prompt you for the
C.1

C.1. INTRODUCTION TO THE SHELL AND THE DESKTOP

C.2

name of the new shell. The change takes effect when you login the next
time. At any time you can invoke a new shell, different from the login
shell, e.g.,
user@machine:dir> csh
invokes a C-shell.
You can invoke a desktop at any time on AIX machines by entering
user@machine:dir> xdt3
Since the use of desktop is supposed to be rather intuitive, you are encouraged to explore its features on your own!

C.1.1

The ".profile" file

The ".profile" file is used to customize the shell environment for ksh.
The following is a typical example of a ".profile" file.
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin:$KHOROS_HOME/bin
HOSTNAME=hostname
PS1= $LOGNAME@$HOSTNAME:$PWD>
EDITOR=emacs
#defines alias for commonly used commands
alias ls=ls -al
alias rm=rm -i
#export environment variables to other processes ...
export PATH HOSTNAME PS1 EDITOR TERM
Here, several environment variables such as PATH, HOSTNAME, PS1 etc.
have been defined. The concept of the environment is like a bulletin
board. You can post definitions of any number of variables there. Application programs that expect specific variables can look for them and
use their values, if they are defined. Note that when you set the value of
a variable ( i.e., left hand side of an equal sign), the name is used without
any prefix. When you want to retrieve the value the $ prefix is used. For
example try,
user@machine:dir> echo $PATH
to look at the value of the current path.

C.1. INTRODUCTION TO THE SHELL AND THE DESKTOP

C.3

In the first line of the example above, a system wide environment

variable $PATH, which is already defined, is redefined to add additional
paths, such as $HOME/bin separated by colon. Observe the $ prefix to
the name of the environment variable. $HOME itself is an environment
variable, containing the value of the home directory. In the 2nd line the
variable HOSTNAME is defined to contain the name of the workstation.
This name is actually retrieved by the program hostname. The 3rd line
redefines the prompt string PS1 using other variables such as LOGNAME,
HOSTNAME and PWD. These variables contain, respectively, the values of
the userid, machine name and present working directory. If the variable
EDITOR is set to emacs, then command line editing features using emacs
keys are enabled.
You can also define aliases for certain commands. In the example
above, the "ls" string is defined to be ls -al - so when you enter "ls" at
the prompt, the command ls -al is executed. To examine all the currently defined aliases, enter,
user@machine:dir> alias
By default, the "rm" command removes files without prompting you for
confirmation which could result in accidental deletion of files. The alias
defined above, assigns rm -i to "rm". The keyword "-i" stands for interactive mode and hence you will always be prompted before removing a
file.
The variables defined in a shell environment are available only to that
shell environment and not to other shells that you may start from the
current one. The export command is used to export the variables to all
subsequent shells. The last line in the above example exports several
environment variables.
To look at all of the environment variables defined in the current ksh
shell, enter,
user@machine:dir> set
To examine the value of an environment variable, enter,
user@machine:dir> echo $PS1
To set a new environment variable, use
user@machine:dir> DUMMY=junk

C.2. MANAGING FILES

C.4

In addition to assigning values to environment variables, the shell

allows programming flow control features. Thus one can write quite
powerful scripts to execute a complex sequence of commands. A script
is nothing but a set of AIX instructions placed in a file. By enabling the
execute permission for this file, and entering its name from the command
line you can cause the instructions in that file to be executed.

C.2

Managing files

In managing your files and directories, you need to be able to list the
contents of a directory or file, copy and move files, compress and uncompress files, create and delete files and directories, control the ownership
and access to files etc. Commands to carryout these tasks are illustrated
below with specific examples. Try them out at a terminal. To get a complete description of each command use the man pages i.e.,
user@machine:dir> man command

C.2.1

Making sense of the directory listing - the "ls" command

The ls command produces a listing of all the files in the current directory. In its most useful form, you will use the -al keywords, i.e.,
user@machine:dir> ls -al dir
Typically, files that begin with the . ( e.g., .profile) are treated as hidden
files. They keyword -a however lists all of the files including the hidden ones. The keyword -l produces the long listing, a sample of which
is shown in figure C.1. This listing provides information on file access
control, ownership, size, time stamp etc. Each line contains information
for a file or directory. The first character identifies whether it is a file (-),
a directory (d) or a symbolic link (l). A symbolic link is a pointer to some
other file (think of it as an alias). The next set of nine characters identify the file access control, in groups of three. Since AIX is a multiuser
environment, users can control ownership and access of their files to
others. The possible access modes are: read (r), write (w) execute (x) or
none(-). These modes apply to (user, group, others). The groups are established by the system administrator. The owner and group names are
listed next, followed by file size in bytes, the time stamp for last change
and the file name.

C.2. MANAGING FILES

drwxr-sr-x
drwxr-sr-x
-rw-r--r-drwx------rw-r--r--rwxr-xr-x
-rw------drwxr-xr-x
-rw-r--r--rw-r----drwxr-xr-x
drwx-----r
w
x
-

Group

File size

sys
sys
others
others
sys
sys
sys
others
sys
others
others
others

1536
1536
1937
512
2504
610
348
512
136
1222
512
512

time stamp

File name

{
{
{

Owner

{
{

permission
control

C.5

27
59
1
2
1
1
1
3
1
1
2
2

kumar
sys
kumar
kumar
kumar
kumar
kumar
kumar
kumar
kumar
kumar
kumar

read permission
write permission
execute permission
no permission

May
May
Jan
Jul
May
May
May
Jul
May
Jan
May
May

24
13
07
21
19
04
14
21
11
19
19
27

23:14
08:52
11:47
1992
12:08
12:36
12:22
1992
14:11
1992
13:12
1992

.
..
.Xdefaults
.elm
.mwmrc
.profile
.rhosts
.tin
.xdt3
Ass1.m
CHEM2
Mail

1st set applies to owner

2nd set applies to group
3rd set applies to all

d indicates a directory
l indicates a symbolic link
Examples:
The file .profile has (read,write,execute) permission for owner (kumar in this case) and
(read,execute) permission for both the group (sys in this case) and everyone.
The directory Mail has (read,write,execute) permission for owner only
The command
chmod g+r file
will give read access to group for file, while
chmod o-w file
takes away write access to all for file
ls -al
chmod
chown
rm
rmdir
mkdir

Other related Unix commands

detailed listing of directory such as the above
change permission on files and directories
change ownership of files and directories
remove or delete a file
remove or delete a directory
create a new directory

Figure C.1: Output of the "ls" command

C.2. MANAGING FILES

C.2.2

C.6

Changing permission on files - the "chmod" command

The chmod command allows you to modify the access control of files and
directories.
Examples
To give read permission to group for file use,
user@machine:dir> chmod g+r file
To give write permission to everyone for all the files in a directory
use,
user@machine:dir> chmod -R a+w dir
Note the the "-R" flag stands for recursive use of the command for
all files in all subdirectories.
Note that, in order to give read permission to a directory, the execute permission at the directory level must be set.
user@machine:dir> chmod a+x dir

C.2.3

Moving files

The mv (move) command moves files and directories from one directory
to another, or renames a file or directory. You cannot move a file onto
itself.
Warning: The mv command can overwrite many existing files unless you
specify the -i flag. The -i flag prompts you to confirm before it overwrites
a file.
Examples
To rename a file, enter:
user@machine:dir> mv oldname newname
This renames file oldname to newname. If a file named newname
already exists, its contents are replaced with those of oldname.

C.2. MANAGING FILES

C.7

To move a directory, enter:

user@machine:dir> mv olddir newdir
This moves all files and directories under olddir to the directory
named newdir, if newdir exists. Otherwise, the directory olddir is
renamed to newdir.
To move several files into another directory, enter:
user@machine:dir> mv file1 dir1/file2 newdir
This moves file1 to newdir and dir1/file2 to newdir/file2.

C.2.4

Copying files

The cp command creates a copy of the contents of the file or directory

from a source to a target. If the file specified as the target exists, the
copy writes over the original contents of the file. If you are coping more
than one source file, the target must be a directory.
Examples
To make a copy of a file in the current directory, enter:
user@machine:dir> cp file.old file.new
If file.new does not already exist, then the cp command creates it.
If it does exist, then the cp command replaces it with a copy of the
file.old file.
To copy a file in your current directory into another directory, enter:
user@machine:dir> cp file.old dir/sub.dir/
This copies file.old to dir/sub.dir/file.old.
To copy all the files in a directory to a new directory, enter:
user@machine:dir> cp /home/user/dir1/* /home/user/dir2
This copies all the files in the directory /home/user/dir1/ to the
directory /home/user/dir2/. As a variant, explore the "-R" flag to
copy not only all of the files, but also all of the subdirectories.

C.2. MANAGING FILES

C.2.5

C.8

Changing ownership of files - the "chown" command

The chown command changes the owner of the file specified by the File
parameter to the user specified by the Owner parameter. The Owner
parameter can be specified either as a user ID or as a lo- gin name found
in the /etc/passwd file. Optionally, a group can also be specified. The
group can be specified either as a group ID or as a group name found in
the /etc/group file. The syntax is,
user@machine:dir> chown -R owner:group file
Only the root user can change the owner of a file.

C.2.6

Compressing files - the "compress" command

The compress command reduces the size of files using adaptive LempelZev coding. Each original file specified by the file parameter is replaced
by a compressed file with a ".Z" appended to its name. The compressed
file retains the same ownership, modes, and access and modification
times of the original file. If compression does not reduce the size of a
file, a message is written to standard error and the original file is not
replaced. The syntax is,
user@machine:dir> compress file
To restore the file to its original state use the command,
user@machine:dir> uncompress file
Also try the GNU version of compress utility called gzip and gunzip they are more efficient in both speed and size.

C.2.7

Removing files - the "rm" command

The rm command removes the entries for the specified file or files from a
directory. If an entry is the last link to a file, the file is then deleted. You
do not need read or write permission for the file you want to remove.
However, you must have write permission for the directory containing
that file.
Examples
To delete a file, enter:

C.3. MANAGING PROCESSES

C.9

user@machine:dir> rm myfile
If there is another link to this file, then the file remains under that
name, but the name myfile is removed. If myfile is the only link,
the file itself is deleted. Caution: You are not asked for confirmation before deleting the file. It is useful to set an alias in your
".profile" file to redefine "rm" as
alias rm=rm -i
After each file name is displayed, enter "y" to delete the file, or
press the Enter key to keep it.

C.3

Managing processes

Since AIX is a multi-tasking operating system, several tasks (or processes)

can be running at the same time. So we need a set of tools to monitor the
currently running processes and the resources they consume, suspend
or terminate specific processes, set priority for certain tasks or schedule
some tasks for execution at specified times. Commands to accomplish
these tasks are illustrated next.

C.3.1

Examining jobs or processes - the "ps" command

The ps command displays a set of currently running tasks. In its simplest and most useful form, the command is,
user@machine:dir> ps -ael
This provides a long listing of all the currently running processes including all of the daemons started by the root at the time of booting the
computer. A typical sample output might look like,
F
200001
240801
260801
260801
222801
40801

S UID
PID PPID
R 21 15101 17095
S 21 17095 16070
S
0 3637 3112
S
0 12169
1
S
0 12938 12169
S
0 10342 8542

C PRI NI ADDR
13 66 20 196d
3 61 20 1dce
0 60 20 b25
0 60 20 8a5
0 60 20 16aa
0 60 20 357a

SZ
116
108
260
152
352
196

WCHAN

TTY
pts/0
pts/0
hft/0
hft/0
-

The process name (or the command name) is shown in the last column. Other useful parameters are the process identification number
(PID), the nice value (NI) which determines the priority of the process,

TIME
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:00
0:05
0:11

CMD
ps
ksh
sendmail
lmgrd
CFDSd
nfsd

C.3. MANAGING PROCESSES

C.10

and the cpu time (TIME) used up by the task. In the above example
listing, sendmail is the mail program, lmgrd is the license manager daemon, CFDSd is the license server for FLOW3D program, nfsd is the NFS
daemon; all of these tasks are run by root with a user identification number (UID) of 0. Note that the ps command itself is a task.

C.3.2

Suspending jobs or processes

If you started a process like "emacs" or "matlab" and you want to suspend that task and return to the shell you can do so with the key sequence
user@machine:dir> ctrl-z
The PID number is displayed at that time. Even if you did not note it
down, you can find a list of all suspended jobs with the command
user@machine:dir> jobs
To resume the job, enter
user@machine:dir> fg %n
where n is the job number produced by the jobs command (and not the
PID number!). The "fg" command brings a job to the foreground.

C.3.3

Terminating jobs or processes - the "kill" command

If you started a process in error and want to terminate it, you can use the
"kill" command. You need to find out the PID number of the process
using "ps command.
user@machine:dir> kill -9 PID
Except for the super user (or root), one can terminate only those processes that belong to (or initiated by) individual users.

C.3.4

Initiating background jobs - the "nohup" command

The nohup command runs a command or a script ignoring all hangups

and QUIT signals. Use this command to run programs in the background
after logging off. To run a nohup command in the background, add an
& (ampersand) to the end of the command. Its syntax is:

C.3. MANAGING PROCESSES

C.11

user@machine:dir> nohup command or script &

When used in its simplest form as above, any output that would normally
appear on the screen will be saved in a file named nohup.out in the
current directory. Wait before logging off because the nohup command
takes a moment to start the command or script you specified. If you
log off too quickly, your command or script may not run at all. Once
your command or script starts, logging off does not affect it. Note that
in order to run a script, the script file must have execute permission.

C.3.5

Script files & scheduling jobs - the "at" command

If you wish to schedule a job to begin at a specified time (typically late

night), use the at command. The job should be constructed in the form
of a script file. For example a file named test.bat contains the following
lines and has execute permission enabled with the chmod command.
matlab >out eof
secant(ass3a,[0,1],eps,1)
fzero(ass3a,0.5,eps,1)
quit
eof
In the above script we start MATLAB in the first line and redirect any
output generated by MATLAB for the standard output ( i.e., screen during
an interactive session) to a file named out. During an interactive session,
MATLAB expects commands from the standard input ( i.e., the keyboard).
Such inputs are now taken from the script file itself as seen in the next
few lines where we execute some MATLAB functions and finally quit
MATLAB.
The contents of such a script file can be executed interactively while
logged in to a machine by simply entering the file name as
user@machine:dir> test.bat
The above example illustrates script programming in its simplest form.
It is possible to write very sophisticated scripts in the Kron shell or any
other shell. When you invoke MATLAB, for example, with the command
matlab, you are actually executing a powerful script. Browse through
the matlab script file using
user@machine:dir> pg /usr/local/matlab/bin/matlab

C.4. LIST OF OTHER USEFUL AIX COMMAND

C.12

to appreciate the power of script programming.

Once a script file has been constructed, you can schedule it to be executed at a specified time using the at command as follows
user@machine:dir> at 21:00 scrit file
which will begin executing the script file at 21:00 hours. To examine a
listing of all the jobs scheduled use,
user@machine:dir> at -l
To remove a job that you have accidentally submitted, you can use,
user@machine:dir> at -r job number

C.4

List of other useful AIX command

A list of less frequently used AIX commands is given in Table C.1. You
can use either the man page feature with
user@machine:dir> man command
or the
user@machine:dir> info
command which starts the InfoExplorer to find out about the syntax and
usage of these and other commands. The directory /usr/bin contains
all of the Unix commands.

C.4. LIST OF OTHER USEFUL AIX COMMAND

command
at
cat
cd
diff
dosformat
dosread
doswrite
find
info
ksh
make
mail
mkdir
man
logout
lpq
lpr
lprm
nice
nohup
pg
ping
pwd
rlogin
rcp
rm
rmdir
rsh
rusers
script
talk
tar
telnet
whoami
xinit
xlc
xlC
xlf

C.13

Function
to schedule a task to start at a given time
to list a file
to change directory
compare two files
formats a floppy diskette using MS-DOS standards
copies a DOS file from a floppy
copies a unix file to a DOS formatted floppy
find a file
InfoExplorer - online documentation
start a Kron Shell
a powerful UNIX make facility
read mail
create a directory
display online manual pages
logout of current AIX session
list the queue of print jobs
send a print job to a network printer
remove a print job from a queue
control job priority
Dont kill a process upon logout
display a file, one page at a time
to check if another machine is alive
display present working directory
remote login to another machine
remote copy files from one host to other
need to have ".rhosts" file setup
remove (delete) files
remove directories
execute a command on a remote machine
need to have ".rhosts" file setup
list remote users in the local area network
logs a terminal session to a file
talk to another user currently signed on
archive files
connect to remote hosts
find out the current user
start X-server
c-compiler
c++ compiler
Fortran compiler

Table C.1: List of other useful AIX command