Mts.

DDB & KNG BSCA, BBA, Commerce and PGDCA College –

Amrapur (Dhanani)

Subject:cs-22 ubuntu linux

Assignment Questions Class: BCA SEM-4

Each Question has 5 Marks:

Unit 1 Introduction, Process Management, Memory Management
(1) Write a short note on Batch OS and Time-Sharing OS.

(2) What is an OS ? Explain Components of OS.

(3) What is process? Explain process state diagram.

(4) What is Scheduled? Explain ots types.

Unit-2 Getting Started with Unix, Unix Shell Command, Text Editing With vi
Editor,
(1) What is Contiguous memory? Explain it's typses.

(2) Give Difference between Paging VS Segmentation.

(3) Explain File structure of unixe OS.

(4) Explain to the Directory Permission.

Unit-3 Shell Programming Getting Started with Linux, Linux Booting

(1) Explain to the file and Directory Related any five commands.

(2) Explain to the Finding Patterns related command.

(3) Explain to the VI Editor model.

(4) Explain the VI editor basica command explain any two.

Unit-4 Working with XWindows (Ubuntu)

(1) Explain shell Variables in unix OS.

(2) Different between environment and shell variable.

(3) Explain basic Features of linux OS.

(4) Write a short not on GPL and Open Source Software.

Unit-5 . Linux Admin (Ubuntu)

(1) What X Windows. Explain Configuration file for X window.

(2) Give different between : GNOME v/s KDE

(3) Explain to the firewall.

(4)Explain to the FTP Server.

Prepared By: dinesh lalkiya

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-: INTRODUCTION:-

History of UNIX

In 1970, Ken Thompson and Dennis Ritchie at AT&T Bell labs developed UNIX operating
system. Earlier this system was known as UNICS (Uniplexed Information and Computer
Service), but later it became famous as a UNIX.

In 1973, it was re-written in ‗C‘ programming language (higher-level language). This made
UNIX the world‘s first portable operating system, capable of being easily ported (moved) to
any hardware. UNIX became easy to understand and modifiable. This was a major advantage
for UNIX. This step led to the wide acceptance of UNIX among users at that time. Today‘s
tremendous popularity of UNIX is also responsible to this step.

The Architecture of UNIX

The various layers depicted in UNIX architecture are shown in below figure and also described
below.

User Interface
Users
Library Interface
Standard Utility Programs User Mode
System Cell Interface Standard Library

UNIX Operating System (Kernel) Kernel Mode

Hardware

1. Hardware

- The bottom layer is the hardware.

- It consists of various physical devices such as CPU, memory, disks, monitor,
printer, etc…
- These devices provide various services. For example, printers are used for printout
purposes.

2. UNIX Operating System (Kernel):

- The next higher layer is the UNIX operating system.

- It is also called system kernel, or simply, kernel. (It is described next).
- It manages all the underlying hardware.
- It directly interacts with the hardware and provides user programs required services.
- It hides the complex details of hardware also.

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- In short, it provides the simple interface between user programs and hardware.
- The main services of an operating system includes process management, memory
management, file system management, I/O management etc.

3. Standard Library:

- Above operating system, next layer is for standard library.

- It contains a set of procedures, one procedure per system cell.
- These procedures are written in assembly language and used to invoke various
system calls from user programs.

4. Standard Utility Programs:

- In addition to operating system and system call library, all versions of UNIX supply
a large number of standard programs.
- Such programs include command processor (Shell), compilers, editors, text
processing programs, file manipulation utilities, a variety of commands and so on.
- Such programs make the user tasks simpler. Users interact with them and they, in
turn, interact with the operating system to get services from operating system.

5. Users:

- The top most layers are of users.

- User programs come in this layer. They interact with the system either by using
library procedures to invoke system calls, or by using utility-program such as shell.

Here, some new terms came in picture such as kernel, shell, and system call. These are
described below.

 Kernel:

- The kernel is the core of the UNIX operating system.

- UNIX uses microkernel approach, where code from the kernel is moved up in
higher layers to keep it as small (thin) as possible.
- Kernel is a program, which is loaded in memory when system is turned on. It stays
there and provides various services until the system is turned off.
- Kernel interacts with the hardware directly. When user program needs to use any
hardware, it has to use services provided by the kernel. Special functions, called
system calls, are used to request kernel. Kernel performs the job on behalf of the
user process.
- In addition to providing services to user programs, kernel also provides other
services like process management, memory management, file system management
and so on.
- In short, kernel manages entire computer system.

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 Shell:

- The shell is an interface between the user program and the kernel.
- When user logs-in to the system, process for shell starts execution. It terminates
when user logs-out from the system.
- Users can directly interact with the shell.
- It works as a command interpreter. It accepts commands from user and translates
them into the form, which the kernel can understand easily.
- It is also a programming language. It provides various programming functionalities
such as looping, branching and so on.

System Call:

- System calls are special functions.

- They are used to request kernel to provide various services, such as reading from a
file stored on hard disk.
- They can be invoked via library procedures, or via command provided by shell, or
even directly from C programs in UNIX.
- System calls are similar to user-defined functions. Difference is that they execute
in the kernel mode, having fully access to all the hardware; while user defined
functions execute in user mode, having no direct access to the hardware.
- Various flavors of UNIX have one thing in common. They all use the same set of
system calls provided by POSIX standard. If any operating system is using other
system calls, then it will not be a UNIX operating system.

Features of UNIX

Many operating systems are there in market, all operating systems having their own
functionality which operating system user should chose that is depends on the task. As being
an operating system, UNIX contains all the features that any operating system should have,
however, in addition to such common features, UNIX contains some special features, which
makes it so much popular. These features are as given below.

1. Files and Process:

- In UNIX, every thing is either a file or a process.

- A file is a collection of data. They are used to store large amount of information
permanently. Directories are considered as files. In addition, physical devices are
also considered as files in UNIX.
- A process is a program in execution. All commands execute as processes and
perform their tasks.

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2. A Multi-User System:

- UNIX is a multi user system. (Dos is a single user system.)

- This means that it allows multiple users to work simultaneously on the same
system.
- Different users can login from different machines into the same machine by using
programs like ‗TELNET‘.

3. Multi Tasking System.

- UNIX is a multi-tasking system too. (Dos is a single tasking system)

- It allows multiple programs to run simultaneously.
- Among simultaneously running processes, one process will be foreground process.
User can interact with this process directly. While other processes will be
background processes. They execute in background without requiring user
interaction.

4. The Building Block Approach:

- UNIX uses the building block approach to perform complex tasks.

- It provides a few hundred commands each of which can perform one simple job to
perform complex tasks; such simple commands can be combined using pipes and
filters. Thus, the small is beautiful philosophy is implemented here.

5. Portability

- Unix is written in high-level language, rather than low level assembly language
- This makes it easy to read, understand, change and move to other machine.
- Thus, it provides portability.

6. Consistent format for files

- UNIX does not provide special formats for different file types.
- It treats all files same, and provides consistent format for files in for of simple byte
streams.
- It is the responsibility of the application programs to interpret file contents as per
requirements.
-
7. Pattern Matching

- UNIX provides very sophisticated pattern matching capabilities.

- There is a set of special character like as ‗*‘ that can be used in pattern matching.

8. Programming facility:

- The UNIX shell is also a programming language.

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- It supports all the programming features such as variables, control structures, loops
so on.
- These features can be used to develop shell programs, called shell scripts. Such
programs can be used to control and automate many of the system‘s functions.
-
9. On-line help

- Unix provides an on-line help facility for all the commands

- For this purpose, it provides a command named ‗man‘. By using this command,
user can have an instant help on any command.

These features make the UNIX operating system popular among other operating systems.

-: TYPES OF SHELL:-

The kernel program is usually stored in a file called ‗unix‘ whereas the shell program is un a
file called ‗sh‘. For each user working with UNIX at any time different shell programs are
running. Thus, at a particular point in time there may be several shells running in memory but
only one kernel. This is because; at any instance UNIX is capable of executing only one
program as the other programs waits for their turn. And since it‘s the kernel which executes
the program one kernel is sufficient. However, different users at different terminals are trying
to seek kernel‘s attention. And since the user interacts with the kernel through the shell
different shells are necessary.

Bourne Shell (Bash)

Among all, Steve Bourne‘s creation, known after him as the Bourne Shell, is the most popular.
Probably that‘s why it is bundled with every UNIX system. Or perhaps it is the other way
round. Because it was bundled with every system it became popular. Whatever the cause and
the effect, the fact remains that this is the shell used by many UNIX users.

C Shell (Corn)

This shell is a hit with those who are seriously into UNIX programming. It was created by Bill
Joy, then pursuing his graduation at the University of California at Berkeley. It has two
advantages over the Bourne Shell.

First, it allows aliasing of commands. That is, you can decide what name you want to call a
command by. This proves very useful when lengthy commands which are used time and again
are renamed by you. Instead of typing the entire command you can simply use the short alias
at the command line.

If you want to save even more on the typing work, C shell has command history feature. This
is the second benefit that comes with C Shell. Previously typed commands can be recalled,

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since the C shell keeps track of all commands issued at the command line. This feature is
similar to the one provided by the program DOSKEY in MS-DOS environment.

Korn Shell (Ksh)

If there was any doubt about the cause-effect relationship of the popularity of Bourne
Shell and it‘s inclusion in every package, this adds fuel to it. The not-so-widely-used Korn
Shell is very powerful, and is a superset of Bourne Shell. It offers a lot more capabilities and is
decidedly more efficient than the other. It was designed to be so by David Korn of AT & T‘s
Bell Labs.

LOGIN COMMANDS

1. passwd:

This command is used to change the password for logged in user. If your account doesn‘t have
a password or has one that is already known to others, you should change it immediately. This
is done with the passwd command.

Syntex

$passwd ⮠
Enter login password: *******
New password: *******
Re-enter new password: ********
passwd (SYSTEM): passwd successfully changed for the particular user

passwd expects you to respond three times. First, it prompt for the old password. Next, it
checks whether you have entered a valid password, and if you have, it then prompts for the
new password.

2. logout:

This command is used to logout or terminate the session there is other way to logout with exit
command and also you can terminate session with the press of ctrl +d but these commands may
not be work every where to terminate the session the most reliable command is logout.

Syntex:

$logout ⮠

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3. Who:

This command is used to get information about users (including yourself), you can use several
commands. The who command reports on users who are presently logged in. The who
command normally reports certain information about logged-in users. By using its options,
you can specify that it report information about the processes initiated by init, and that it report
reboots changes to the system clock, and logoffs. If you invoke who with no option or
argument, you get the following output:

Syntex:
$who
Output:
Username tty00 Date
Username tty01 Date
Option

-u This option is used to see ―time since the last activity‖ (idle time) and the process ID
number for each logged-in user. A ―process ID number‖ is an integer number assigned by
UNIX to uniquely identify a given process.

Example
$who –u

Output
Username tty00 Date Process No.
Username tty01 Date Process No.

-q This option is used to shows login IDs and a count of the logged-in users q stands for
quick.

Example
$who –q

Output
User Name Terminal Name
User Name Terminal Name
#Users = 2

4. who am i

Sometime we logged in from several terminals under different accounts, and we forget that
which username or terminal name we are using at that time this command is useful to know
username and terminal name.

Syntex:
$who am i

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Output
User Name Terminal Name Date and Time

5. Clear:
This command is used to clear the screen. This command works like cls command of
dos.

Syntex:

$clear

UNIX FILE SYSTEM STRUCTURE

UNIX looks at everything as a file and any UNIX system has thousands of files. If you write a
program, you add one more file to the system. When you compile it, you add some more.
Files grow rapidly, and if any are not organized properly, you will find it difficult to locate
them. Proper file organization requires a directory-based storage system. Just as an office has
separate file cabinets to group files of a similar nature, UNIX also organizes its own files in
directories and expects you to do that as well.

The file system in UNIX is one of its simple and conceptually clean features. It lets users
access other files not belonging to them, and without infringing on security. It also offers an
adequate security mechanism so that outsiders are not able to tamper with a file‘s contents.

The file is a container for storing information. As a first approximation, we can treat it simply
as a sequence of characters. If you name a file foo and write three characters a, b and c into it,
then foo will contain only the string abc and nothing else.

The Types of Files:

UNIX treats directories and devices as files as well. A directory is simply a folder where you
store file and other directories. All physical devices like the hard disk, memory, CD-ROM,
printer and modem are treated as files. The shell is also a file, and so it the kernel. And if you
are wondering how UNIX treats the main memory in your system, it‘s a file too!

So we have already divided files into three categories:

1. Ordinary (Regular) File:

This is the most common file type in UNIX. All programs you write belong to this
type. An ordinary file itself can be divided into to types.

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(A) Text File:

A text file contains only printable characters, and you can often view the contents and make
sense out of them. All C and Java program sources, shell and perl scripts are text files. A text
file contains lines of characters where every line is terminated with the new line character, also
known as line feed. When you press enter while inserting text, the LF character is appended to
every line. You won‘t see this character normally, but there is a command which can make it
visible.

(B) Binary File:

On the other hand, contains both printable and nonprintable characters that cover the entire
ASCII range 0 – 255. Most UNIX commands are binary files, and the object code and
executables that you produce by compiling C programs are also binary files. Picture, sound
and video files are binary files as well. Displaying such files with a simple eat command
produces unreadable output and may even disturb your terminal‘s settings.

2. Directory File:

A directory contains no data, but keeps some details of the files and subdirectories that it
contains. The UNIX file system is organized with a number of directories and subdirectories,
and you can also create them as and when you need. You often require to do that to group a set
of files pertaining to a specific application. This allows two or more files in separate
directories to have the same filename.

A directory file contains an entry for every file and subdirectory that it houses. If you have 20
files in a directory, there will be 20 entries in the directory. Each entry has two components.

 The file name.

 A unique identification number for the file or directory.

If directory contains an entry for a file named abc, we commonly say that the directory
contains the file abc. Though we shall often be using the phrase ―contains the file‖ rather than
―contains the file name‖, you must not interpret the statement literally. A directory contains
the file name and not the file‘s contents.

3. Device File:

You will also be printing files, installing software from CD-ROM r backing files t tape. All
these activities are performed by reading or writing the file representing the device. For
instance, you print a file by writing the file representing the printer. When you restore files
from tape, you read the file associated with the tape drive. The kernel takes care of this
―reflection‖ by mapping these special files to their respective devices. It is advantageous to
treat devices as files as some of the commands used to access an ordinary file also work with
device files.

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Device file names are generally found inside a single directory structure /dev. A device file is
indeed special; it‘s not really a stream of character. In fact, it doesn‘t contain anything at all.
You will soon learn that every file has some attributes that are not stored in the file but
elsewhere on the disk. It‘s the attributes f a device file that entirely governs the operation of
the device. The kernel identifies a device from its attributes and then uses them to operate the
device.

FILE PERMISSION

Before we take up file permission, you need to understand the significance of file ownership.
When you create a file, your username shows up in the third column of the file‘s listing; you
are the owner of the file. Your group name is seen in the fourth column; your group is the
group owner of the file. If you copy someone else‘s file, you are the owner of the copy. If you
can‘t create files in other users‘ home directories, it‘s because those directories are not owned
by you.

UNIX has a simple and well-defined system of assigning permissions to files. Issue the ls –l
command once again to view the permissions of a few files.

Categories of user Types Of Permission

User u Read r
Group g Write w
Other o Execute x

$ls –l

-rwxr-xr-- 1 kumar metal 20500 may 10 19:21 chap02

-rwxr-xr-x 1 kumar metal 890 Jan 29 23:17 dateval.sh
-rw-rw-rw- 1 kumar metal 84 Feb 12 12:30 dept.lst

Observe the first column that represents the file permissions. These permissions are also
different for the three files. UNIX follows a three-tired file protection system that determines a
file‘s access right. To understand how this system works, let‘s break up the permissions string
of the file chap02 into three groups. The initial – (in the first column) represents an ordinary
file and is left of the permissions string:

Each group here represents a category and contains three slots, representing the read, write and
execute permission of the file – in that order. r indicates read permission, which means cat can
display the file. w indicates write permission; you can edit such a file with an editor. x
indicates execute permission; the file can be executed as a program. The – shows the absence
of the corresponding permission.

The first group (rwx) has all tree permission. The file is readable, writable and executable by
the owner of the file, kumar. But do we know who the owner is? Yes we do. The third column

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shows kumar as the owner and the first permissions group applies to kumar. You have to log
in with the username kumar for these privileges to aplly to you.

The second group (r-x) has a hyphen in the middle slot, which indicates the absence of write
permission by the group owner of the file. This group owner is metal, and all users belonging
to the metal group have read and execute permissions only.

The third group (r--) has the write and executes bits absent. This set of permissions is
applicable to others, i.e., those who are neither the owner kumar nor belong to the metal group.
This category (others) is often referred to as the world. This file is not world-writable.

You can set different permissions for the three categories of users – owner, group and others.
It‘s important that you understand them because a little learning here can be a dangerous thing.
Faulty file permission is a sure recipe for disaster.

DIRECTORY PERMISSIONS

Directory also has their own permissions and the significance of these permissions differ a
great deal from those of ordinary files. You may not have expected this, but be aware that read
and write access to an ordinary file are also influenced by the permission of the directory
housing them. It‘s possible that a file can‘t be accessed even though it has read permission,
and can be removed even when it‘ write-protected. In fact, it‘s very easy to make it behave
that way.

If the default directory permission is not altered, the chmod theory still applies. However, if
they are changed, unusual things can happen. Though directory permissions are taken up later,
it‘s worthwhile to know what the default permissions are on your system:

Categories of user Types Of Permission

User u Read r
Group g Write w
Other o Execute x

$mkdir c_progs

$ls –ld c_progs

drwxr-xr-x 2 kumar metal 512 may 9 09:57 c_progs

First character d displays that c_progs is directory, second, third and fourth character rwx is
showing that user is having all permission read, write and execute, fifth, sixth and seventh
character r-x showing that group is having only read and execute permission, eighth, ninth and
tenth character r-x showing that others having read and execute permission.

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The default permissions of a directory on this system are rwxr-xr-x (or 755); that is what they
should be. A directory must never be writable by group and others. If you find that your files
are being tampered with even though they appear to be protected, check up the directory
permissions.

RELATED COMMANDS

(1) ls:

This command is used see the list of files and directory at current location or specified path.
This command supports us to see the list of file and directory.

Syntex:

$ls [-Option] [Path]

Options:

–x Multicolumn output
-F Marks executable with * directories with / and symbolic links with @
-a Show all filenames beginning with a dot including . and ..
-R Recursive list
-r Sorts filenames in reverse order (ASCII collating sequence by default)
-1 One filename in each line
-l Long listing in ASCII collating sequence showing seven attributes of a file
-d List only directory
-t Sorts filenames by last modification time
-lt Sorts filenames listing by last modification time
-u Sorts filenames by last access time
-lu Sort by ASCII collating sequence but listing shows last access time
-lut As above but sorted by last access time
-i Display inode number

(2) cat

This command is use to displays files contents, creates new file, or appends data to an existing
file.

Syntax 1 To display the content of file

$cat File Name

Example

$cat Example1.txt

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Syntax 2 To create a new file

$cat > File Name

Enter the file content
Ctrl + d

Example

$cat > Example2.txt

Enter the file content
Ctrl+d

Syntax 3 To append existing file

$cat >> File Name

Enter the file content want to append
Ctrl+d

Example

$cat >>Example1.txt
Enter the file content want to append
Ctrl+d

(3) cd (Change Directory)

This command is used to change one directory forward, backward and supporting to go to root
directory directly.

Syntax

cd Change working directory to home directory.

cd .. Change working directory to parent directory.
cd Path Change working directory to specified directory.
cd / Change working directory to root directory.

Example

If current directory /home/abc and user home directory is /home/guest then

$cd will take you to home directory

now current directory is /home/guest

$cd .. will take you to home directory

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now current directory is /home

$cd /home/abc

now current directory is /home/abc

$cd /

now current directory is / (Root)

(4) pwd: (Path for working directory)

This command is used to see path for working directory in unix you can not see the prompt
with path at that time if we want to know the what is our current path. The pwd command
supports to know path for working directory.

Syntax

$pwd

Example

If current directory is /home guest then

$pwd will show you /home/guest

(5) mv command (Renaming Files and Moving a file from one place to another place)

The mv command renames files. It has two distinct functions:

 It renames a file or directory.

 It moves a group of files to a different directory.

To rename a file or directory

Syntax

$mv Old File Name New File Name

mv doesn‘t create a copy of the file; it merely renames it. No additional space is consumed on
disk during renaming. To rename the file abc.txt to xyz.txt you can write following command.

$mv abc.txt xyz.txt

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If the destination file doesn‘t exist, it will be created. For the above example, mv simply
replaces the filename in the existing directory entry with the new name. By default, mv
doesn‘t prompt for overwriting the destination file if it exists. So be careful.

To move a file from one place to another

Syntax

$mv file name Destination folder or path of Destination folder

Example

To move a.txt file from root to home/abc directory then following command is used from root.

$mv a.txt /home/abc

Above command will move file named a.txt from root to /home/abc

(6) cp (Copying a file)

This command is used to copy a file.

Syntax

$cp [option] Source file path or file Target path

Option
-i Asks before overwriting a destination file
-r It copies directory structure.

Example

To copy a a.txt file from /home/abc to /home/guest following command is used

$cp /home/abc/a.txt /home/guest

Above command will copy a.txt file from /home/abc to /home/guest directory

(7) ln (Link a file)

This command is used to link a file. Links are used for sharing of files from two different
locations in directory structure. There are two types of link 1) soft link 2) hard link.

Soft Link:- It links file name if source is deleted then link will not be found

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Hard Link:- It links physical storage area of the file if source file is deleted still it will target
the physical part of the file and data can be found.

Syntax:

$ln [Option] Source File Name Link File Name

Option
-s Creates soft link if this option is not specified with ln command then hard link
will be created.

Example

File Name abc.txt following is the content of the file

Abc abc abc abc abc abc

$ ln –s abc.txt xyz.txt

Soft link will be created if abc.txt file will be deleted then user will not be able to see the
content of xyz.txt because it is related to abc.txt file name.

$ ln abc.txt xyz.txt

Hard link will be created if abc.txt file will be deleted still user will be able to work will the
content of abc.txt file.
(8) rm (Remove File)

This command is used to remove (delete) a file.

Syntax

$rm [Option] [Path]File Name

Options
-i Ask before removing a file
-r Performs recursive deletion in directory
-f Removes write protected file also

Example

To remove a file abc.txt from /home/guest current directory is root then following command
will be written.

$rm /home/guest/abc.txt

Above command will remove abc.txt file.

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(9) rmdir: (Remove directory)

This command is used to remove directory form current path and specified path.

Syntex:

$rmdir [Path] Directory Name

This command is useful to remove empty directory the prime condition of this command is this
that whatever the directory is, you are going to remove it that must be empty else message will
display on the screen that directory is not empty.

Error Message

rmdir: dirname: cannot remove [Directory not empty]

(10) mkdir: (Make Directory)

This command is used to create a directory on current path or specified path.

Syntex:

$mkdir Directory Name

Some time you are giving right command still directory is not going to be created for following
reasons.

Error Message

Mkdir: directory name: [file exists]

(1) The directory name is given with mkdir is already exist

(2) There may be a an ordinary file by that name in the current directory
(3) The permission set for the current directory don‘t permit

(11) Umask

This command is used to set default file permission. Whatever the file is created by the owner
at that time which permission is default given to user, group and other that default permission
will be set using Umask command. Umask stands for user file creation mask. The term mask
implying which permissions to mask or hide. The umask value tells Unix which of the three

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permission are to be denied rather than granted. The current value of umask can be easily
determined by just typing umask.

To see the default permissions

Syntax

$umask

$umask
0022

Here first 0 indicates that for owner no permission is denied, Second 0 indicates that for user
no permission is denied, third number 2 indicates that write permission is denied to group and
fourth number two is also indicating that write permission denied to others.

Changing default permission using umask

$umask 111

This would see to it that here onwards any new file that you create would have the permissions
555 and any directory that you create would have the permission 666.

(12) Chmod (Changing File and Directory Permissions)

A file or directory is created with a default set of permissions, and this default is determined by
a simple setting called umask. Generally, the default setting write-proteccts a file from all
except the user (new name for owner), though all user may have read access. However, this
may not be so on your system. To know your system‘s default, create a file xstart:

$cat > xstart

$ ls –l

-rw-r--r-- 1 kumar metal 1906 Sep 5 23:38 xstart

Syntax Relative Permission

$chmod <<User Category>> <<Operation>> <<Permission>> <<File Name>>

User Category : User, Group, Other

Operation : Assign Or remove a permission using + and –
Permission : Read, Write, Execute

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Example

To assign execute permission to the user of the file xstart, we need to write following
command

$chmod u+x xstart

$ls –l

-rwxr--r-- 1 kumar metal 1906 May 10 20:30 xstart

to use multiple characters to represent the user category (ugo).

$chmod ugo+x xstart or $chmod a+x xstart or $chmod +x xstart

$ls –l

-rwxr-xr-x 1 kumar metal 1906 May 10 20:30 xstart

To use more then one file at a time

$chmod u+x note note1 note2 note 3

To grant and revoke a permission at a time

$chmod a-x,go+r xstart

Abbreviations Used By chmod

Category Operation Permission

u user + Assigns Permission r Read Permission
g group - Remove Permission w Write Permission
o Other = Assigns absolute permission x Execute permission
a All(ugo)

Syntax Absolute Permissions

$chmod Combination of Decimal Code

Combination of Decimal Code

 Read Permission - 4 (Octal 100)

 Write Permission - 2 (Octal 010)
 Execute Permission - 1 (Octal 001)

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Binary Octal Permissions Significance

000 0 --- No permission

001 1 --x Executable Only
010 2 -w- Writable Only
011 3 -wx Writable and Executable
100 4 r-- Readable Only
101 5 r-x Readable and Executable
110 6 rw- Readable and Writable
111 7 rwx Readable, Writable and Executable

Example 1

$chmod 666 xstart;

$ls –l xstart;

-rw-rw-rw- 1 kumar metal 1906 May 10 20:30 xstart

The 6 indicates read and write permission (4 + 2). To restore the original permissions to the
file, you need to remove the write permission (2) from group and others:

Example 2

$chmod 644 xstart

$ls –l xstart

-rw-r--r-- 1 kumar metal 1906 May 10 20:30 xstart

To assign all permissions to the owner, read and write permissions to the group, and only
execute permission to the other, use following command.

Example 3

$chmod 761 xstart

-rwxrw---x 1 kumar metal 1906 May 10 20:30 xstart

(13) Chown: (Change Owner)

This command is used to change the owner of file. It transfers ownership of a file to a user,
and it seems that it can optionally change the group as well. The command requires the user-id
(UID) of the recipient, followed by one or more filenames. Changing ownership requires super
user permission, so let‘s first change our status to that of super user with the su command.

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$su
Password:********
#_

After the password is successfully entered, su returns a # prompt, the same prompt used by
root. su lets us acquire super user status if we know the root password. To now renounce the
ownership of the file note to sharma, use chown in the following way:

Syntax:

Chown < New Owner Name> file(s)

Example

#ls –s note

-rwxr----x 1 kumar metal 347 May 10 20:30 Note

#chown sharma note;

#ls –l

-rwxr----x 1 sharma metal 347 May 10 20:30 Note

#exit

$_

Once ownership of the file has been given away to sharma, the permissions that previously
applied to kumar now apply to sharma. Thus, kumar can no longer edit note since there‘s no
write privilege for group and others. He can‘t get back the ownership either. But he can copy
the file to his own directory, in which case he becomes the owner of the copy.

(14) chgrp: (Changing Group Owner):

By default, the group owner of a file is the group to which the owner belongs. The chgrp
(change group) command changes a file‘s group owner. A user can change the group owner of
a file, but only to a group to which she also belongs. Yes, a user can belong to more than one
group.

chgrp shares a similar syntax with chown. In the following example, kumar changes the group
ownership of dept.lst to dba (No super user permission required):

Syntax:

chgrp <<New Group Name>> <<File Name>>

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$ls –l dept.lst

-rw-r--r-- 1 kumar metal 139 Jun 8 16:43 dept.lst

$chgrp dba dept.lst

-rw-r--r-- 1 kumar dba 139 Jun 8 16:43 dept.lst

If kumar is also a member of the dba group then above command will work, if he is not a
member of the dba group then super user can make the command work. Note that kumar can
reverse this action and restore the previous group ownership (to metal) because he is still
owner of the file and consequently retains all right related to it.

(15) Find (Locating Files)

This command is used to find a particular file.

Syntax

$find [Path]/File Name

Example 1

$find abc.txt

$find /home/guest/abc.txt

User can use wild card character with file name * means all character and ? means 1 character

Example 2

To find the file which having extension name .txt following command is used

$find *.txt

Example 3

To find the file which 2nd character is d then following command is used

$find ?d*.*

(16) Pg commands

This command is used to see the information of the document page wise.

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Syntax

$pg Starting Line Number No of Lines Per Page Option File Name

Example

$pg +10 –15 –p ―Page No. %d‖ –s abc.txt

Explanation

Above command starts displaying the contents of abc.txt file, 15 lines at a time from 10th line
onwards. At the end of each displayed page a prompt comes which displays the page number
on view. This prompt overrides the default ‗:‘ prompt of the pg command. The –s option
ensures that the prompt is displayed in reverse video.

(17) More Command (Paging out)

This command is used to see the information of the document page wise.

Syntax

$more File Name Press q to exit

Example

$more abc.txt

Explanation

You will see the contents of abc.txt on the screen, one page at a time. At the bottom of the
screen, you‘ll also see the filename and percentage of the file that has been viewed:

----More --- (17%)

More has a couple of internal commands that don‘t show up on the screen when you invoke
them. q, the command used to exit more, is an internal command.

Navigation of More Command

Irrespective of version, more uses the spacebar to scroll forward a page at a time. You can also
scroll by small and large increment of lines or screens. To move forward one page, use

f or spacebar To move page forward

b To move back one page

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Enter or j One line forward

k One line back

p or 1G Beginning of file

G End of file

q Quit

(18) less (Paging Out)

This command is used to see the information of the document page wise. This command work
just like more command and it is older version.

Syntax

$less File Name Press q to exit

Example

$less abc.txt

Explanation

You will see the contents of abc.txt on the screen, one page at a time. At the bottom of the
screen, you‘ll also see the filename and : that is ready to accept the navigation command those
are described below.

Abc.txt :

Less has a couple of internal commands that don‘t show up on the screen when you invoke
them. q, the command used to exit less, is an internal command.

Navigation of less Command

Irrespective of version, less uses the spacebar to scroll forward a page at a time. You can also
scroll by small and large increment of lines or screens. To move forward one page, use

f or spacebar To move page forward

b To move back one page

Enter or j One line forward

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k One line back

p or 1G Beginning of file

G End of file

q Quit

At the end of file user has to give q to quit from less command.

(19) head

We are using cat command to view the content of files, However, if the file is bigger than 24
lines then the matter would naturally scroll off the screen. If we want to stop the scrolling we
can do so by hitting the pause key and resume it by hitting any other key. This of course needs
a bit of a practice otherwise the matter scrolls off the screen before you can reach for the pause
key. To exercise a tighter control over the way we can view files Unix proves several utilities.
Out of these the head commands help in viewing lines at the beginning of the file respectively.

Syntax:
$head –Line Number File Name

Unless otherwise specified the head command assumes that you want to display first 10 lines in
the file. Should you decide to view first fifteen lines you simply have to say.
$head -15 myfile

Here with head command we can specify the number of lines if we decide to override this
default value.

The disadvantage of head is that they cannot display a range of lines. Moreover, what is
displayed is final. That is, if we have displayed the first 50 lines in a file we cannot move back
and view say the 10th line. Unix provides two commands which offer more flexibility in
viewing files.

(20) tail

We are using cat command to view the content of files, However, if the file is bigger than 24
lines then the matter would naturally scroll off the screen. If we want to stop the scrolling we
can do so by hitting the pause key and resume it by hitting any other key. This of course needs
a bit of a practice otherwise the matter scrolls off the screen before you can reach for the pause
key. To exercise a tighter control over the way we can view files Unix proves several utilities.
Out of these the tail commands help in viewing lines at the ending of the file respectively.

Syntax:

$tail –Line Number File Name

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Unless otherwise specified the tail command assumes that you want to display last 10 lines in
the file. Should you decide to view last fifteen lines you simply have to say.

$tail -15 myfile

Here with tail command we can specify the number of lines if we decide to override this
default value.

The disadvantage of tail is that they cannot display a range of lines. Moreover, what is
displayed is final. That is, if we have displayed the last 50 lines in a file we cannot move back
and view say the 10th line. Unix provides two commands which offer more flexibility in
viewing files. These commands are pg and more.

(21) wc (Word Count)

This command is used to count number of characters, words and lines in an given input file. If
file is not given, it takes input from standard input.

Syntax

$wc [Option] File Name

Options
-l Counts number of lines
-w Counts number of words
-c Counts number of characters

Example

A file abc.txt having following data

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

$ wc abc.txt

Output

2 20 42 abc.txt

Note: Spacebar and Enter also known as on character

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(22) touch (Changing the time stamp)

This command is used to change the time stamp.

Syntax

$touch MonthDateHoursMinutes File Name

Example

$ls –l

-rw-r--r-- 1 kumar metal 870 Mar 16 14:30 emp.lst

$touch 02281030

-rw-r--r-- 1 kumar metal 870 Feb 16 16:50 emp.lst

- : VI EDITOR : -

No matter what work you do with the UNIX system, you will eventually write some C
programs or shell scripts. You may have to edit some of the system files at times. For all this
you must learn to use an editor, and UNIX providers a very versatile one vi editor, Vi editor is
a screen editor, where a portion of the file is displayed on the terminal screen, and the cursor
can be moved around the screen to indicate where you want to make changes. You can select
which part of the file you want to have displayed. Screen editors are also called display
editors, or visual editors. VI is one of the more popular screen editors that run on the UNIX
system.

 Invoking VI

It will put filename into a buffer, and display the file on the screen. If the file is larger than the
screen can display, the screen will act as a window into the file. At the beginning of a session,
the screen will display the first part of the file. If filename does not exist, VI will create it.

 Modes in VI editor

One of the most important aspects to remember about vi is that most of the commands fall into
one of three modes:

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(1) Command mode:

This is the default mode of vi editor. This mode is used to give some command for navigation,
edition and copy or cut. This is the base mode of VI editor if user want to switch this mode to
insert or input mode then user has to press i or I or a or A. If user wants to switch execute
mode from this mode then user has to press :

(2) Input or Insert Mode:

This mode is used to enter data in vi editor. If user wants to insert some text to the editor then
first user has to select this mode. This mode will be selected from command mode pressing I
or i or a or A.

(3) Execute Mode:

This mode is used to save or quit from vi editor. What ever the changes user has done in file
using VI editor if user wants to save, find any particular string then using this mode user can
save or find the string and also whenever user wants to quit from the vi editor this mode will
supports user to quit from the vi editor. To switch to this mode user has to press : or / on
command mode

 Switching mode in VI

While you start VI editor at that time you will be at VI mode that will ready to accept defined
command on that particular key but not any input. If you want to input text into the file you
will have to go to input mode for that you will have to press ―i‖.

If you will press ―i‖ at VI mode you will be at input mode here you can input any data into the
file from this mode if you want to switch to VI mode then you will have to press ―Esc‖ key. If
you will press ―Esc‖ key at input mode you will be able to switch to VI mode.

If you want to switch to command mode from the vi mode then you will have to press ―:‖ or
―/‖ that will support you to switch you from vi mode to command mode.

If you want to switch to command mode from the input mode then you will have to first come
to the VI mode then you will be able to switch to command mode. To switch from input mode
to command mode then you first will have to press ―Esc‖ key and then after you will have to
press ―:‖ or ―/‖ key that will support you to switch from input mode to command mode via VI
mode.

 Cursor movement in VI editor

Whatever the command you are giving that will work on VI mode only.

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To move around in the file, use the arrow keys: the up arrow will move the cursor up one line,
the down arrow down one line. The right arrow will cause the cursor to move one position to
the right. From the end of a line, it will go to the beginning of the next line.

For terminals with no functional arrow keys, four keys will move the cursor around:

h left arrow
j down arrow
k up arrow
l right arrow

 Screen control commands

Whatever the command you are giving that will work on vi mode only.

Ctrl + f
This will move the user forward one screen in the file.
Ctrl+b
This will move the user backward one screen in the file.

G
This will move the cursor to the end of the file. Note, again that vi, like any other
UNIX utility, is always case sensitive.

num
This will bring the cursor to line defined line number.

 Entering, Editing, Copying data into vi editor

Whatever the command you are giving that will work on vi mode only.

x
That will delete on character.

dd
That will delete lines beginning at the current line.

yy
That will copy lines beginning at the current line.

p
That will paste copied line.

u
This is very useful command. It cancels the effect of the previously executed
command.

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q
When in vi, typing will bring the user into command mode. As the : is typed, it will be
displayed n the last line of the screen, and vi will wait for a command to be typed. q is such a
command. This will exit vi, if no changes have been made since the last write-to-file
command :q! will exit, even if the buffer has not been written to the file.

w
Will cause the contents of the buffer to be written to the file :wq will write the buffer to
the file, and exit t the calling shell.

i
This will support you to switch from VI mode to input mode.

:
This will support you to switch from VI mode to command mode.
esc
This will support you to switch from input mode to vi mode.
/ This will support you to find any particular pattern from the file

-: CONCEPT OF REDIRECTION AND PIPING:-

Most UNIX commands expect input to come from a file(s), and produce output to anther
file(s). ―One of these files is the standard input, and is the place from which a program expects
to read its input. Another is called the standard output, and it is the file to which the program
writes its results. The third file is the diagnostic output (also called Standard error), and it is a
file to which program writes any error responses. Generally, the standard input is taken to be
the keyboard (input is typed by the user), the standard output is the terminal screen.

Standard Input, Output, Error

Many UNIX commands get input from what is called standard input and send their output to
standard output (often abbreviated as standard input and standard output). Your shell sets
things up s that standard input is your keyboard, and standard output is the screen.

Here‘s an example using the cat command. Normally, cat reads data from all of the files
specified by the command line, and sends this data directly to standard output. Therefore,
using the command:

/home/bca/cat history master

Display the contents of the file history followed by masters.

However, if you don‘t specify a filename, cat reads data from standard input and sends it back
to standard output. Here‘s an example

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/home/bca/cat > papers

Hello there
Hello there
Bye
Bye
Ctrl +d

Each line that you type is immediately echoed back by cat. When reading form standard input,
you indicate the input is ―finished‖ by sending an EOT (end of text) signal, in general,
generated by pressing Ctrl + D.

(1) Redirection Output:

Now, let‘s say that you want to send the output of cat to a file, to save our shopping list on
disk. The shell lets you redirect standard output to a file name, by using the ―>‖ symbol.
Here‘s how it works:

$cat amg.txt>output.txt

The > operator causes a new file to be created. If you had already created a file named
output.txt, it would be deleted and replaced with the new data. If you wanted to add the new
data to the old output, you could use the >> operator. For example:

$cat amg.txt>>output.txt

This will add content of amg.txt to output.txt file both file must be exists at specified path.

(2) Redirection Input:

There are two possible sources of input for UNIX commands. Programs such as ls and find get
their input from the command line in the form of options and filenames. Other programs, such
as cat, can get their data from the standard input as well as from the command line. Try the cat
command with no options on the command line:

$cat

There is no response. Because n files are specified with the command, cat waits to get its input
from your keyboard, the standard input file. The program will accept input lines from the
keyboard until it sees a line which begins with Ctrl+D, which is the end of file signal for
standard input.

To redirect the standard input, you use the < operator. For example, if you wanted cat
to get its input from output.txt you could use the command.

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$cat<output.txt

The difference between this command and

$cat output.txt

is a subtle one. In filenames provided as options to a command, you can use filename
substitution. When redirecting input, you must use the name of an existing file or device.

(3) Standard Error:

Whenever the command is given wrongly at prompt there must be an error occurs to store the
error message in file because we can see in windows base application that if any system error
occurs that generates the log file for that particular error. In that way in UNIX such a file can
be generated as standard error.

Example

$ cat > output.txt 2>errorfile

A message cannot open uoutput.txt will be written in errorfile. You can see such message
with the help of cat errorfile.

Concept of Piping:

Suppose that you wanted a directory listing that was sorted by the mode file type plus
permissions. To accomplish this, you might redirect the output from ls to a data file and then
sort that data file. For example.

$ls –l>tempfile

$sort<tempfile

-rw-rw-r- 1 marsha adept 1024 Jan 20 14:14 Lines.dat

-rw-rw-r- 1 marsha adept 3072 Jan 20 14:14 Lines.idx
-rw-rw-r- 1 marsha adept 256 Jan 20 14:14 Pages.dat

Although you get the result that you wanted, there are three drawback to this method:

You might end up with a lot of temporary file in your directory. You would have to go back
and remove them. The sort program does not begins its work until the first command is
complete. This is not too significant with the small amount of data used in this example, but it

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can make a considerable difference with larger files. The final output contains the name of
your temp file, which might not be what you had in mind.

Fortunately, there is a better way.

The pipe symbol (|) causes the standard output of the program on the left side of the pipe to be
passed directly to the standard input of the program on the right side of the pipe symbol.
Therefore, to get the same results as before, you can use the pipe symbol. For example

$ls –l|sort

-rw-rw-r- 1 marsha adept 1024 Jan 20 14:14 Lines.dat

-rw-rw-r- 1 marsha adept 3072 Jan 20 14:14 Lines.idx
-rw-rw-r- 1 marsha adept 256 Jan 20 14:14 Pages.dat

To connect two or more operation within the same stream at that time pipe sign is used
to perform such a operation in UNIX.

Finding patterns (Regular expression, gerp, egrep, fgrep)

UNIX was originally written for people using slow and clumsy teletype terminals. The fewer
the number of characters typed the better. For that reason, many UNIX commands are very
short two or three letters. The options, called flags, are also very short usually one character.
The syntax for some commands will be described in this session along with some of the
options or flags. However, many flags for many commands will not be mentioned. It is the
user‘s responsibility to verify which flags/options are available on their machine. Short
commands are usually not very mnemonic. But there are always tricks to help remember their
meaning.

 Regular Expression

Regular expression as used in VI, grep, etc. Regular expressions are formed from single
characters, concatenation of regular expressions, choice between two regular expressions, and
zero or more occurrences of a regular expression.

In UNIX, regular expressions are defined using the following Meta symbols and extensions to
the regular expression notation.

. Match any single character.

[xyz] Match any character enclosed in the brackets.
[A-B] Match any character in the range.
[^xyz] Complement: match any character not enclosed in the brackets.
re* The Kleene star: match zero or more occurrences of the Re.
^re RE match must occur at the beginning of a line.
re$ RE match must occur at the end of line.

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\\ Represent the backslash

 grep Command

The grep command is used to read from the specified file on the command line.

Syntex:
$grep [option] RE [file(s)]

Option
-b Display, at the beginning of the output line, the number of the block in which
the regular expression was found. This can be helpful in locating block
numbers by context. (The first block is block zero)
-c Print the number of lines that contain the pattern, that is, the number of
matching lines.
-h Prevent the name of the file that contains the matching line from being
displayed at the beginning of that line.
Note:- When searching multiple files, grep normally reports not only the
matching line but also the name of the file that contains it.
-i Ignore distinctions between uppercase and lowercase during comparisons.
-l Print one time the name of each file that contains lines that match the pattern-
regardless of the actual number of matching lines in each file-on separate lines
of the screen.
-n Precede each matching line by its line number in the file.
-s Suppress error messages about nonexistent or unreadable files.
-v Print all lines except those that contain the pattern. This reverses the logic of
the search.

Examples:

1. $grep –i ‘you’ pax corn

Here the pax and corn are file name from where you want to find ‗you‘ or ‗YOU‘ because
option i is indicating that ignoring case.

2. grep –c ‘you’ pax corn

Here you want to see that ‗you‘ how many times repeated in the files. The output of above
command will be this.

Output
pax : 1
corn: 5

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3. grep –h ‘you’ pax corn

Above command will shows the output for the matching lines without specifying the files from
which they came.

4. grep –iv ‘you’ pax corn

Above command specifies output of ―every line in pax and corn that does not have ‗you‘ or
‗YOU‘.

5. grep ‘^The’ pax cron

The above command finds lines that begin with The.

6. $grep ‘n$’ pax corn

Above command finds lines that end with n.

 egrep Command

egrp uses full regular expression in the pattern string. The syntax of egrep is the same as that
for grep.

Syntex:
$egrep [option] RE [files]

The egrep command uses the samre regular expressions as the grep command, except for
\(and\), and includes the following additional patters:

RE+ Matches on or more occurrence(s) or RE. (Contrast this with grep‘s

RE* pattern, which matches zero or more occurrences of RE).
RE? Matches zero or one occurrence of RE.
RE1|RE2 Matches either RE1 or RE2. The | acts as a logical OR operator.
(RE) Groups multiple regular expressions.

The egrep command accepts the same command-line options as grep as well as
the following additional command-line options:

-e Search for a special expression (that is, a regular expression that begins with a-)
-f Put the regular expression into file.

Example:

1. $egrep ‘[A-Z][A-Z]+’ pax corn

The above command finds two or more consecutive uppercase letters.

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2. $egrep ‘DOS|SCO’ pax corn

The above command finds each line that contains either DOS or SCO.

3. $egrep ‘n(e|o)w’ corn

The above command finds either new or now.

 fgrep Command (Multiple string searching)

The fgrep command searches a file for a character string and prints all lines that contain the
string. Unlike grep and egrep, fgrep interprets each character in the search string as a literal
character, because fgrep has no meta characters.

Syntex:
$fgrep [options] string [files]

The options you use with the fgrep command are exactly the same as those that you use for
egrep, with the addition of –x, which prints only the lines that are matched in their entirety.

Working with column and fields using cut and paste command

(1) cut command

Cut command is used to cut or pick up a given number of character or fields from the specified
file. This command is support you to see specified filed. Like you have large database
information but out of them you want to see some selected fields than cut command is useful in
UNIX.

Syntax:

$cut [Main Options] Field or Character List [Options] File Name

Main Options:

-f This option is used to specify field list separated by TAB

-b This option is used to specify bytes list single character taken as bytes
-c This option is used to specify character list single character taken as character

It is must that you will have to used one main option with cut command.

Options:

-d This option is used to specify the character as field separator

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-s This option is used to skip the lines which does not have field separator

Example 1:
$cat >> abc.txt
1. one two three four five six
2. one two three four five six
3. one two three four five six

(1) $cut –b 1,2 abc.txt (This will show you given byte)
1.
2.
3.

(2) $cut –b 1-4 abc.txt (This will show you range 1 to 4 byte)
1. o
2. o
3. o

(3) $cut –c 1,2 abc.txt (This will show you given character)
1.
2.
3.

(4) $cut –c 1-4 abc.txt (This will show you range 1 to 4 character)
4. o
5. o
6. o

Example 2:
$cat >>abc1.txt
1:one:two:three:four:five:six
2:one:two:three:four:five:six
3:one:two:three:four:five:six

$cut –f 1-3 –d‖:‖ abc1.txt

1:one:two
2:one:two
3:one:two

Example 3:

(1) $cat >> abc.txt

1. one two three four five six
2. one two three four five six
3. one two three four five six
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

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(2) $cut –f 1-4 abc.txt

$cat >> abc.txt
1. one two three
2. one two three
3. one two three
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz

(3) $cut –f 1-4 –s abc.txt

1. one two three
2. one two three
3. one two three

Paste Command
This command is used to merges lines of files. This command prints lines consisting of
sequentially corresponding lines of each given files, separated by tabs, terminated by a new
line. If no files are given , the standard input is used. A filename of -means standard input.

Syntax:

$Paste [Option] File Name1 File Name2

Options:

-s Serial Paste the lines of one file at a time rather then one line from each file.

-d Delimiters tow files

Example 1
$cat >> 1.txt
1. aaa bbb ccc
2. aaa bbb ccc
3. aaa bbb ccc

$cat >> 2.txt

A) AAA BBB CCC
B) AAA BBB CCC
C) AAA BBB CCC

(1) $paste 1.txt 2.txt

1. aaa bbb ccc A) AAA BBB CCC
2. aaa bbb ccc B) AAA BBB CCC
3. aaa bbb ccc C) AAA BBB CCC

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(2) $paste -d"|" 1.txt 2.txt
1. aaa bbb ccc |A) AAA BBB CCC
2. aaa bbb ccc |B) AAA BBB CCC
3. aaa bbb ccc |C) AAA BBB CCC

(3) $paste -s 1.txt 2.txt

1. aaa bbb ccc 2. aaa bbb ccc 3. aaa bbb ccc
A) AAA BBB CCC B) AAA BBB CCC C) AAA BBB CCC

(4) $paste -s -d"|" 1.txt 2.txt

1. aaa bbb ccc |2. aaa bbb ccc |3. aaa bbb ccc
A) AAA BBB CCC |B) AAA BBB CCC |C) AAA BBB CCC

Tools for sorting using sort and uniq

Sort:
This command is used to sort file with field number. This command is used to arrange your
file alphabetically.

Syntax:

$sort [Options] File Name

Options

+Field Number This option is used to define field on which you want to sort your
file

-r This option is used to sorting data in reverse order.

Note: Field number always start with 0

Example:

$cat >> auto.txt

1 h j k
4 a x d
3 d l i
2 j o m

(1) $sort auto.txt

1 h j k
2 j o m

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3 d l i
4 a x d

(2) $sort +1 auto

4 a x d
3 d l i
1 h j k
2 j o m

(3) $sort -r auto

4 a x d
3 d l i
2 j o m
1 h j k

(4) $sort -r +1 auto

2 j o m
1 h j k
4 a x d
3 d l i

Uniq Command
This command is used to finding out the duplicate and uniq entry from any particular files,
Sometimes we merge the files at that time duplication is the big problem to prevent duplication
of the records uniq command will support us to finding out duplication and uniq rows.

Syntax:
$uniq [Options] Filenames

Options:

-c This will count any particular rows that how many times it is repeated in file
-u This will remove the duplicate rows from the file and will print only non
repeated rows
-d This will finding out the duplicate rows and only print duplicate rows not uniq
rows

Example:

$cat >> new.txt

01 accounts 6213
01 accounts 6213
02 admin 5423
03 marketing 6521
03 marketing 6521

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03 marketing 6521
04 personnel 2365
05 production 9876
06 sales 1006

(1) $uniq new.txt

01 accounts 6213
02 admin 5423
03 marketing 6521
04 personnel 2365
05 production 9876
06 sales 1006

(2) $uniq -c new.txt

2 01 accounts 6213
1 02 admin 5423
3 03 marketing 6521
1 04 personnel 2365
1 05 production 9876
1 06 sales 1006

(3) $uniq -u new.txt

02 admin 5423
04 personnel 2365
05 production 9876
06 sales 1006

(4) $uniq -d new.txt

01 accounts 6213
03 marketing 6521

- : COMPARING FILES:-

You have seen UNIX commands that works with a single file at a time. However, often a user
must compare two files and determine whether they are different, and if so, just what the
differences are UNIX provides commands that can help:

The cmp command compares two files and then simple reports the character number and line
number where they differ.

The comm command compares two files and the report in three columns.

The diff command compares two files and tells you exactly where the file differ and what you
must do to make them agree.

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 cmp command

The simplest command for comparing two files, cmp, simply tells you whether the files are
different or not, if they are different, it tells you where in the file it sptted the first difference, if
you are use cmp with no option. The command‘s syntax is:

Syntex:

$cmp [options] file1 file2

options

-l Gives you more information. It displays the number of each character that is
different (the first character in the files is number 1), and then prints the octal value f
the ASCII code of that character. (You will probably not have any use for the octal
value of a character until you become a shell programming expert).

-s Prints nothing but returns an appropriate result code (0 if there are no differences,
1 if there are one or more differences). This option is useful when you write shell
scripts.

Examples:

$cat >na1
allen Christopher
babinchak david
best betty
bloom dennis
boelhower joseph
bose anita
cacossa ray
delucia joseph

$cat > na2

allen Christopher
babinchak David
best betty
boelhower joseph
bose
cacossa ray
delucia joseph

Note that the first difference between the two files is on the second lines. The D in David in
the second file is the 29th character, counting all new line characters at the ends of lines.

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$cmp –s na1 na2
$echo $?

output:

The variable ? is the shell variable that contains the result code of the last command, and $? Is
its value. The value 1 on the last line indicates that cmp found at least one difference between
the two files. If is there no difference found at the time of comparing two files then output will
be 0.

 comm command (Finding What is Common)

The comm. Command compare two sorted files line by line. comm. prints lines that are
common, and lines that are unique, to two input files. The two files must be sorted before
comm. can be used. The filename – means the standard input. With no options, comm.
produces three column output. Column one contains lines unique to files1, column two
contains lines unique to file2, and column three contains lines common to both files.

Syntex:

$comm [options] [-help] [-version] file1 file2

The options -1, -2, and -3 suppress printing of the corresponding columns.

-help Print a usage message and exit with a nonzero status.

-version Print version information on standard output then exit.

 diff command (Converting One File to Other)

The diff command is much more powerful than the cmp command. It shows you the
differences between two files by outputting the editing changes that you would need to make to
convert one file to the other.

Syntex:

$diff [options] file1 file2

-b Ignores trailing blanks, and treats all other strings f blanks as equivalent to one
another.
-i Ignores uppercase and lowercase distinctions.
-t Preserves indentation level of the original file by expanding tabs in the output.
-w Ignores all blanks (spaces and tabs).

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First, let‘s look at the two files that show what diff does:

Let‘s apply diff to the files na1 and na2 (the files with which cmp was demonstrated):

Example:

$diff na1 na2

2c2
<babinchak david
-
>babinchak David
4d3
<bloom dennis
6c5
<bose anita
-
>bose

These editor commands are quite different from that diff printed before. The first four
lines show

2c2
<babinchak david
-
>babinchak David

Which means that you can change the second line of file1 to match the second line of
file 2 by executing the command, which means change line 2 of file 1 to line 2 f file2. Note
that both the line from file1 prefaced with <-and the line from file2-prefaced with >- are
displayed, separated by a line consisting of three dashes.

The next command sys to delete line 4 from file1 to bring it into agreement with file2
up to but not including line3 of file2. Finally, notice that there is another change command,
6c5, which says change line 6 of file 1 by replacing it with line 5 of file2.

You can use the –i option to tell diff to ignore the case of the characters, as follows:

$diff –i na1 na2

4d3
<bloom dennis
6c5
<bose anita
-
>bose

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The –c option causes the differences to be printed in context, that is, the output displays several
of the lines above and below a line in which diff finds a difference. Each difference is marked
with one of the following:

An exclamation point (!) indicates that corresponding lines in the two files are similar but not
the same.
A minus sign (-) means that the line is not in file2.
A plus sign (+) means that the line is in file2 but not in file1.

$diff –c na1 na2

Changing information in files using tr and sed

(1) tr (Translating Characters)

This command is used to translate character for any particular files. The tr filter
manipulates individual character in a line.

Syntex:

$tr expression 1 expression2

Example 1

$cat >> abc.txt

abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
ctrl+d
$tr ‗[a-z]‘ ‗[A-Z]‘ < abc.txt
ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD
ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD ABCD
$

Example 2 with same file

$tr ‗[a|b|c]‘ ‗[o]‘ < abc.txt

oood oood oood oood oood
oood oood oood oood oood
$

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Example 3 with same file

$tr ‗abc‘ ‗opq‘ < abc.txt

opqd opqd opqd opqd opqd
opqd opqd opqd opqd opqd
$

option –d Delete given character from the files.

Example 4
$tr –d ‘/a’ < abc.txt
bcd bcd bcd bcd bcd
bcd bcd bcd bcd bcd
$

sed (Stream editor)

sed is a multipurpose tool which combines the work of several filters. It is derived
from ed. The sed performs non interactive operations on a data stream hence its name. It uses
very few options but has a host of feature that allow you to select lines and run instructions on
them. Learning sed will prepare you well for perl which uses many of these feature.

sed uses instructions to act n text. An instructin combines an address for selecting
lines, with an actions to be taken on them, as shown by the syntax:

Syntex:

sed [option] ‘address action’ file name

The address and action are enclosed within single quotes. Addressing in sed is done in
two ways

By one or two line numbers (like 3,7)

By specifying a /- enclosed pattern which occurs in a line (like /From:/)

Common files

$cat >> abc.txt

1. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
2. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
3. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
4. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
5. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
6. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd

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Example1 Line addressing

$sed ‗3q‘ abc.txt

1. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
2. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
3. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
$

Example2 Print line from anywhere

$sed –n ‗5,6p‘ abc.txt

5. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
6. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
$
Example3 Print line from anywhere (Negative Action)

$sed –n ‗4,$!p‘ abc.txt

1. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
2. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
3. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
$

Example4 Using multiple instructions

$sed –n –e ‗1p‘ –e ‗3p‘ abc.txt

1. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
3. abcd abcd abcd abcd abcd
$

Displaying data in octal

od command:

Many files (especially executables) contain nonprinting characters, and most UNIX commands
don‘t display them properly. The file od file contains some of these characters that don‘t show
up normally. More about od command

$cat > odfile

White space includes a
The ctrl+G character rings a bell
The ctrl+L character skips a page
ctrl+d

The apparently incomplete first line actually contains a tab. The od command makes these
commands visible by displaying the ASCII octal value of its input. The –b option displays this
value for each character separately. Here‘s a trimmed output:

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$od –b odfile

0000000 127 150 151 164 145 040 163 160 141 143 145 040 151 156 143 154
0000020 165 144 145 163 040 141 040 011 012 124 150 145 040 007 040 143 etc…
Each line displays 16 bytes of data in octal, preceded by the offset (position) in the file of the
first byte in the line. In the absence of proper mapping it‘s difficult to make sense out of this
output, but when the –b and –c option are combined, the output is friendlier:

$od –bc odfile

0000000 127 150 151 164 145 040 163 160 141 143 145 040 151 156 143 154
W h i t e s p a c e i n c l
0000020 165 144 145 163 040 141 040 011 012 124 150 145 040 007 040 143
u d e s a \t \n T h e 007 c
etc……
Each line is now replaced with tow. The octal representations are shown in the first line. The
printable character and escape sequences are shown in the second line. The first character in
the first line is the letter W having the octal value 127. You will recall having used some of the
escape sequences with echo. Let‘s have a look at their various representations.

The tab character Ctrl-i is shown as \t and the octal value 011.
The ball character Ctrl-g is shown as 007. Some systems show it as \a.
The formfeed character, Ctrl-l is shown as \f and 014.
The LF character Ctrl-j is shown as \n and 012. Note that od makes the newline
character visible too.

Tools for mathematical calculations

 bc command

This command is used to have calculator at prompt.

Syntax

$bc
-

Examples

To do simple calculation

$bc
5+6
11
Ctrl+d

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To do multiple calculation

$bc
5+6;5*2
11
10

To have decimal point

$bc
scale=2
5/2
2.50

To have binary to decimal

$bc
ibase=2
1111
15

To have decimal to binary

$bc
obase=2
15
1111

 factor command

When factor command is invoked without an argument, it waits for a number to be typed in. If
you type in a positive number less then 2^46. It will factories the number and print its prime
factors; each one is printed the proper number of times. Then it waits for another number. It
exits if it encounters a zero or any non-numeric character.

Example

$factor
15
3
5

28
2
2
7
q to quit

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If factor is invoked with an argument, it factors the number as above and then exits.

Monitoring input and output command

 tee

tee is an external command and not a feature of the shell. It handles a character stream by
duplicating its input. It saves one copy in a file and writes the other to standard output. tee can
be placed anywhere in a pipeline. It creates new file and stored enter data and also give the
output at a time to standard output.

Syntax

$tee [other command] filename

Other command

User can place other command using pipeline.

Example 1

Creating a.txt file using tee command.

$tee abc
abc abc abc
Output Displayed to next row abc abc abc
xyz xyz xyz
Output Displayed to next row xyz xyz xyz
Ctrl + d

Example 2

Using pipeline

$who | tee user.txt

Username Terminal No. Date and Time

Same information will be stored in user.txt file.

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 script (Recording your session)

To store your login session or any particular session script command is used.

Syntax:

$script File Name

Example:

$script abc

script started, output file is abc

$ls
bbb xyz.txt
$wc bbb
1 1 1 bbb
$exit
script done, output file is xyz

$cat
$ls
bbb xyz.txt
$wc bbb
1 1 1 bbb
$exit
script done, Date and Time will be shown here

Tools for displaying date and time

 cal

cal is a handy tools that you can invoke any time to see the calendar of any specific moth, or a
complete year. To see the calendar for the month of July 2009, provide the month number and
year as the two arguments to cal:

Syntax
$cal [Month Number Year]

Month Number Year

This option will show you the calendar for the particular month of particular year. To see the
Aug 2009 calendar then following command will be invoked.

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$cal 8 2009
Above command will show you the calendar for the month of august 2009.

User can see also all year calendar for the particular year for that user has to write year number
after cal command.

Example
$cal 2009

Above command will show you 12month calendar for the year of 2009.

With cal, you can produce the calendar for any month or year between the year 1 and 9999.
This should serve our requirements.

 date (Displaying date and time)

Unix has a date command that shows the date and time in the form used on the Internet.

Syntax:

$date
Fri Aug 19 13:28:34 IST 2005
$_

date is a valid command, and it displays both the date and time. Notice another security feature
of UNIX; the command doesn‘t prompt you to change either the date or time. This facility is
available only to the administrator, and the strange thing is that he uses the same command.

- : COMMUNICATION RELATED COMMANDS: -

 telnet (Remote Login)

The telnet command will allow you to log on to a remote machine. If yu have an account on a
host in a local network (or on the Internet), you can use telnet with the hostname or IP address
as argument:

Syntax

$telnet IP Address

Example

$telnet 192.168.35.12….
Trying 192.168.35.12.
Connected to 192.168.35.12.
Escape character is ‗^]‘.

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SunOS 5.8
Login:

You now have to enter your login name at this prompt, and then the password to gain access to
the remote machine. As long as you are logged in, anything you type is sent to the remote
machine, and your machine just acts as a dumb terminal. Any files you use or command that
you run will always be on the remote machine. After you have finished, you can press ctrl+d
or type exit to logout and return to your local shell.

The escape character lets you make a temporary escape t the telnet> prompt so you can execute
a command on your local machine. To invoke it, press [Ctrl-]]. YYou can then use the ! with
a UNIX command, say ls to list files on the local machine:

$ctrl+]
telnet>!ls –l

A telnet session is closed in the same way as any login session. Use [Ctrl + d] or the command
appropriate to the shell. If you are at the telnet> prompt, use quit, an internal command of
telnet.

 wall (Communicating with users)

The wall command addresses all users simultaneously. Most UNIX systems don‘t permit users
to run this command and reserve it for the sole use of the administrator.

#wall
The machine will be shut down today
At 14:30 hrs. The backup will be at 13:30 hrs
Ctrl+d

All users currently logged in will receive this message on their terminal. This command is
routinely executed b the administrator—especially before shutdown of the system.

 mtod (For message of the day)

The ‗message of the day‘ like the news, is typed by the superuser in the file /etc/mtod. In case
of the news command it is entirely the user‘s discretion whether to read the news or not. As
against this the user doesn‘t have a choice whether to read the message of the day or not.
Reading the message of the day is mandatory, as it is displayed as soon as you login. As soon
as you login a file /etc/profile file gets executed. This file contains a command cat /etc/motd.
As a result the contents of /etc/motd are bound to get displayed on the screen. When I logged
in I found the following message on my screen.

The air-conditioning system needs a maintenance check! Hence the system would be down
between 2.00 to 5.00 PM. See you at 5.00

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The /etc/profile is like our good old AUTOEXEC.BAT of DOS. It gets executed every time
the user logs in. In addition every user has his own .profile file in his home directory using
which he can customize his working environment. The sequence of executing of these files is
/etc/profile followed by .profile.

As you must have guessed it is only the superuser who can change the contents of the file
/etc/mtod.

 Write (Communicating with users)

The write command can be used by any user to write something on someone else‘s terminal,
provided the recipient of the message permits communication.

Syntax

$write user name

Example

$write user2
Hey there! I am back to the office
Ctrl+d

On executing this command the message would be relayed to the user whose login name is
user2. He would hear a beep on his terminal, followed by the message:

Message from user1 on unix (tt3a) [Thu Oct 15 17:13:58]….

Hey there! I am back to the office
(end of message)

There are two prerequisites for a smooth write operation:

1) The recipient must be logged in, else an error message is ineitable.

2) The recipient must have give permission for messages to reach his or her terminal.
This is done by saying the $ prompt.

$mesg –y

If you are expecting nothing of consequence and do not wish to be disturbed by

social trivia like the one we just saw, you can deny write permission to your terminal by
saying.

$mesg –n

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A superuser however can write to any terminal, irrespective of whether mesg has been set –y or
–n.

 mail

Using mail you can quickly and efficiently circulate memos and other written information to
your co-workers, including directions for the out of town party this Saturday and the latest
meanderings. You can even send and receive mail from people outside your organization, if
you and they use networked computers.

write command required that the user to whom the message is to be sent not only to be logged
in, but also open to messages. Unlike this, mail can be sent to users who have logged in
currently or even to users who haven‘t logged in currently. In case the user has logged in at
several terminals the moment mail is sent to this user it becomes available at all the terminals.

Sending mail

Syntax
$mail user name
subject:-Unix Course
Body of the message
Ctrl+d

Sending mail more then one user

Syntax

$mail user name1 user name2 user name3

subject:-Unix Course
Body of the message
Ctrl+d

Sending mail from the file

Syntax

$mail user name1 user name2 user name3 < abc.txt

Handling Incoming Mail

The incoming mail received by a user is stored in a mailbox. Each user is given a mailbox
whose name is same as the log name of the user. For example, for user aa1 the filename would
be aa1 and it would be present in /user/spool/mail directory. All mail received from different

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sources is appended to this mailbox file. However while viewing mail the messages are shown
separately as if they are being read from separate files.

To read the mail that has been received we simply say mail at the shell prompt.

$mail
mail 1 User Name Day and Date Time Subject
mail 2 User Name Day and Date Time Subject
mail 3 User Name Day and Date Time Subject
&

& displayed at the bottom. This is known as the mail prompt. We can issue several
commands at this prompt. If you want to know which, you can type a? and obtain help on
these commands.

&2
Mail 2 will be displayed

&q to quit from the mail box.

 news

The system administrator is the sole person who can make news under the UNIX OS. He types
the information which he wants everyone on the network to know of in different files in
/user/news directory. Whenever we log in if any fresh news has come in since we logged out
last time then a message is displayed on our terminal saying.

News: rally tennis appeal

Where rally, tennis and appeal are the names of the files in which the news items are
available.

We may either choose to ignore it, or if any news item interests us we may decide to
peruse the same. To read the news, we have to say at the dollar prompt:

$news
rally
Content of the files will be displayed here

tennis
Content of the files will be displayed here

appeal
Content of the files will be displayed here

If you want to peruse only a particular item from the several items then you can say.

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$news rally
rally
Content of the files will be displayed here

There are two more options available with the news command. The –n option only lists
the names of the news from the /user/news directory that have not yet been read by you.

-s option which provides a count of the unread new items in the /user/news directory.

$news –s
5 news items.

If you try news –s after you have gone through all the news item it promptly displays
the message ‗No news‘.

 finger

finger command is used to tell you which users are connected and which, if any, can
receive messages. It displays a list of all those who have logged in and places a * next to those
terminals where mesg is set to –n.

Syntax

$finger –i

Above command will displays following output

Login TTY When Idle

ABC *tty10 Fri Oct 13 17:25 8 minutes 12 seconds
XYZ tty3 Fri Oct 13 17:21 49 Seconds
JKL *tty4 Fri Oct 13 16:21

- : PROCESS RELATED COMMANDS:-

 ps (Process Status)

Display status of current running processes. By default, it shows process ID, terminal with
which process is associated, time consumed by the process since it has been started and process
name (generally command name or program name).

Syntax

$ps [Option]

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-f Full listing showing the PPID (Parent Process ID) of each process
-e or A All processes including user and system processes
-u Process of user usr only
-l Long listing showing memory-related information
-t Processes running on terminal term, (say /dev/console)

Example

$ps

Simple ps command will display following output

PID TT TIME COMMAND

36724 tty10 0 ksh.exe
37796 tty10 0 ps.exe

 To run processes in background

To run a process in the background, Unix provides the ampersand (&) symbol. While
executing a command, if this symbol is placed at the end of the command then the command
will be executed in the background. When you run a process in the background a number is
displayed on the screen.

This number is nothing but the PID of the process that you have just executed in the
background. Let‘s understand this with an example.

$sort employee.dat > emp.out &

17653
$

The task of sorting the file employee.dat and storing the output in emp.out has now been
assigned to the background, letting the user free to carry out any other task in the foreground.

Advantages and limitation of background processes

(1) On terminal of background process no success or failure is reported on the screen.

Then how do we keep track of it? That is where the PID displayed on the screen comes
in handy. We can search for this PID in the output of ps to verify whether the process
is still running or has been terminated.

(2) The output of a background process should always be redirected to a file. Otherwise
you would get a garbled screen showing the output of the background process along
with whatever you are doing in the foreground.

(3) With too many processes running in the background the overall system performance is
likely to degrade.

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(4) If you log out while some of your processes are running in the background all these
processes would be abandoned halfway through. This is natural because all your
processes are children/grandchildren/great grandchildren of your sh (shell) process.
And when we log out the sh process dies along with all its children.

 nice (changing the process priorities)

Though all processes are equal, some processes are more equal than others. They can be made
so by increasing their priority. The processes with higher priority would obviously get a time
slot earlier and would be fired earlier than the other processes in the queue.

The priority of a process is decided by a number associated with it. This number is called
‗nice‘ value of the process. Though paradoxical, higher the nice value of a process lower is its
priority. The nice value of a process can range from 0 to 39, with 20 as the default nice value
of a process. Thus, a process with a nice value 25 would execute slower then the one with a
nice value 20.

Example 1

$nice cat employee.dat

This would increase the nice value of our cat process from 20 to 30 Since, we didn‘t specify
the increment, an increment of 10 got assumed and the nice value got correspondingly
incremented. If we so desire, we can specify the value of the increment.

$nice – 15 cat employee.dat

Now the cat process will have a nice value 35 (20+15). Note that the increment can range from
0 to 19. By incrementing the nice value we are putting cat on a lower priority and hence it
would be executed slower than what it does normally.

$nice --15 cat employee.dat

Above command will reduce the nice value of a process but this kind operation can be done by
only administrator. If any user wants to put his/her process with higher priority then he or she
has to request to the administrator to put his or her process in higher priority.

Note that the priority of a process can be changed at the time of firing the process at command
prompt. Once the process has been submitted to the process queue its priority cannot be
changed.

User can see the nice values of the various process running in memory using ps –l command.

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 kill (Killing the process)

When kill command is invoked, it sends a termination signal t the process being killed. A
signal is a mechanism to communicate with a process. These signals have been given
numbers. In the above example we have not communicated the signal number to the process to
be killed. Hence, the default signal is same as the one generated when you hit the Del key in
the middle of a ls or cat command. This default signal however is not very powerful and may
not be able to kill a process at all times. A good example is the sh process which cannot be
terminated by this default signal.

Syntax

$kill PID (Process ID)

To delete process forcefully then following syntax is used

$kill -9 PID

User can see the process id using ps cmmand.

Another important point. You can kill only your processes and not those fired by other users.
Super user of course enjoys an altogether different status. He can kill any of the user‘s
processes easily.

 at

This command is capable of executing UNIX commands at a future date and time. The UNIX
command can be specified at the command prompt or can be stored in a file and the at
command can use this file to execute the commands. Both these facilities are exemplified
below.

$at 17:00
echo ―It‘s 5 PM! Backup your files and logout‖
Ctrl + d
Job 853158864.a at Wed Jun 14 17:00:00 IST 1996

At 5 PM in the evening you would see a message on your screen ―It‘s 5 PM! Backup your files
and logout‖.

 batch

Instead of we specifying that our commands be executed at a precise moment in time

sometimes we may let the system decide the best time for executing our commands. The way
to achieve this is through a command called batch. When we submit our jobs using this
command, Unix executes our job when it is relatively free and the system load is light. Since

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the time of execution of our commands is left for the system to decide we don‘t specify the
time while executing the batch command.

$batch
echo ―Hello Word‖
Cltr + d
Job 692322435.b at Fri Jun 14 17:00:00 IST 1996

Once again note that the ‗b‘ extension given to our job-id signifies that it has been submitted
using the batch command.

 Cron (Running Jobs Periodically)

At and batch command are meant for one-time execution but corn executes programs at regular
intervals. It is mostly dormant, but every minute it wakes up and looks in a control file (the
crontab file) in /var/spool/cron/crontabs for instructions to be performed at that instant. After
executing them, it goes back to sleep, only to wake up the next minute.

A user may also be permitted to place a crontab file after his/her login name in the crontab
directory kumar has to place his crontab commands in the file /var/spool/cron/crontabs/kumar.
This location is, however, system-dependent. A specimen entry in the file
/var/spool/cron/crontabs/kumar can look like this:

00-10 17 * 3,6,9,12 5 find / -newer .last_time -print backuplist

The first field (legal value 00 to 59) specifies the number of minutes after the hour when the
command is to be executed. The range 00-10 schedules execution every minute in the first 10
minutes of the hours. The second field (17, i.e. 5 p.m.) indicates the hours in 24 hour format
for scheduling (legal value 1 to 24).

The third field (legal value 1 to 31) control the day of the month. This field (here, an asterisk),
read with the other tow, implies that the command is to be executed every minute, for the first
10 minutes, starting at 5 p.m. ever day. The fourth field (3,6,9,12) specifies the month (legal
values 1 to 12). The fifth field (5 – Friday) indicates the days of the week (legal values 0 to 6),
Sunday having the value 0.

 crontab

User can also create your own crontab files with vi in the format shown below

00-10 17 * 3,6,9,12 5 find / -newer .last_time -print backuplist

The first field (legal value 00 to 59) specifies the number of minutes after the hour when the
command is to be executed. The range 00-10 schedules execution every minute in the first 10

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minutes of the hours. The second field (17, i.e. 5 p.m.) indicates the hours in 24 hour format
for scheduling (legal value 1 to 24).

The third field (legal value 1 to 31) control the day of the month. This field (here, an asterisk),
read with the other tow, implies that the command is to be executed every minute, for the first
10 minutes, starting at 5 p.m. ever day. The fourth field (3,6,9,12) specifies the month (legal
values 1 to 12). The fifth field (5 – Friday) indicates the days of the week (legal values 0 to 6),
Sunday having the value 0.

You will then need to use the crontab command to place the file in the directory containing
crontab files for cron to read the file again:

crontab cron.txt cron.txt contains cron commands

If kumar runs this command, a file named kumar will be created in /var/spool/cron/crontabs
containing the contents of cron.txt. In this way, different users can have crontab files named
after their user-ids.

 wait: (Waiting for process to complete)

The wait command built into most shells (including all the shells discussed in this book) will
wait for completion of all background processes or a specific background process. Usually,
wait is used in scripts, but occasionally you may want to use it interactively to wait for a
particularly important background job or to pause until all of your current background jobs
complete so you will not load the system with your next job. The command will wait for a
particular PID. If you are using a job control shell, you can use a job identified instead of a
PID.

Example:

$job1 & job2 & wait job2 id (Process Id job1 [01] & job2 [02]

$job 1 & job2 & wait [02]

 sleep

Most interactive use of wait in can be replaced by notify. The notify command tells the shell
not to wait until issuing a new prompt before telling you about the completion of all or some
background jobs. The command notifies will tell shell to give asynchronous notification of job
completion. The command notifies jobid will tell the shell to give asynchronous notification
for a particular job.

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Example

$sleel 30 & sleep 10 & notify %2

[2] Done Sleep 10

[1] Running Sleep 20
$

When you do this example, don‘t type anything after hitting return to enter notify %2. The
notification appears as soon as job 2 finishes.

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- : SHEELL PROGRAMMING:-

Shell Variables

 System Variable

PS2 :- Secondary prompt string (default >)

PATH :- Search path for commands; multiple pathnames are separated with
a colon (default /bin: /usr/bin)

HOME :- Default argument for the cd command; contains the pathname of

the home directory.

LOGNAME :- Holds user‘s login name

MAIL :- Name of file to check for incoming mail

IFS :- Internal field separator (default space, tab or new line)

SHELL :- Pathname of the shell

TERM :- Specifies your terminal type

MAILCHECK:- Specifies how often to check for mail in $MAIL or $MAILPATH.

If set to 0, mail is checked before each prompt (default 600 seconds).

User Variable

Set

The set statement displays all variables available in the current shell. This command will show
the list of all variables and their expression.

Unset

To remove the definition of a function from the shell we can use the unset command. For
example,

$unset HOME

Now user does‘t have HOME variable that stored the home directory path.

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echo

This command is used to print something on the screen. This command is just like printf in c
language. To print value of any variable using echo that variable should have $ followed by
variable name.

read

This command is used to input a value of any variable at the time of running program. This
command is just like scanf in c language.

Use of Logical Operator

Shell allows usage of three logical operations while performing a test. These are:

(a) –a (read as AND)

(b) –o (read as OR)
(c) ! (read as NOT)

The first two operators, -a and –o, allow two or more conditions to be combined
to be combined in a test. Let us see how they are used in a program Consider the following
problem.

Relational Operator

-lt Less then

-gt Greater then
-le Less then equal to
-ge Greater then equal to
-eq Equal to
-ne Not equal to

If and Fi conditions

 if then fi

Like most programming languages, shell to uses the keyword if to implement the decision
control instruction. The simplest form of the if statement looks like this:

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Syntax:

if [ Condition ];then
True Block
fi

If you are familiar with any high level language you must have used some form of an if
statement. The UNIX shell if statement is different from others at least on one count. In most
high level languages the if statements are usually concerned with the values of variables – is
age greater than 20, is answer equal to yes or some such condition.

Example

echo ―Enter a Number \c‖

read N
if [ $N –eq 10 ]; then
echo ―Enter number is 10‖
fi

 if…then….else….fi

The if statement by itself will execute a single command, or a group of commands, when the
exit status of the control command is 0. It does nothing when the exit status is 1. Can we
execute one group of commands if the exits status is 0 and another group if the exit status is 1?
of course. This is what is the purpose of the else statement, which is demonstrated in the
following shell script.

Syntax:

if [ Condition ];then
True Block
else
False Block
fi

Example

echo ―Enter a Number \c‖

read N
if [ $N –eq 10 ]; then
echo ―Enter number is 10‖
else
echo ―Enter number is not 10‖
fi

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 if…then….elif….fi

Example

echo ―Enter a Number \c‖

read N
if [ $N –eq 0 ]; then
echo ―Enter number is 0‖
elif [ $N –gt 0 ];then
echo ―Enter number is greater then 0‖
else
echo ―Enter number is less then 0‖
fi

The Case Control Structure

Another way of controlling the sequence of execution is using the case control structure.
Though if-else constructs can be nested, and abundance of conditions may make tracing the
control in a program difficult. Hence, for a program where we are required to select from
several alternatives a case control structure is the answer. The general form of the case control
instruction is given below.

Syntax

case value in

choice 1)
Statement block;;
choice 2)
Statement block;;
choice )
Statement block;;
*)
Statement block;
case

Example

Echo ―Enter a number from 1 to 3: \c‖

read num

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case $num in
1) echo you entered 1;;
2) echo you entered 2;;
3) echo you entered 3;;
*) echo you entered not 1,2,3;
esac

Looping in shell scripting

It is often the case in programming that you want to do something a fixed number of times.
The while loop is ideally suited for such cases. Let us look at a simple example which uses a
while loop.

Syntax

while [ Condition ]
do
statement block
done

Example

count=1
while [ $count –le 3 ]
do
echo $count
done

The program executes all commands between do and done 3 times. These commands form
what is called the ‗body‘ of the while loop. Immediately following the while is a control
command. So long as the exit status of the control command is true, all commands within the
body of the while loop keep getting executed repeatedly. To begin with, the variable count is
initialized to 1 and every time the simple interest logic is executed the value of count is
incremented by one. The variable count is many a times called either a ‗loop counter‘ or an
‗index variable‘.

 The Until Loop

An until loop looks like this:

unitl [ Condition ]
do
Statement Block
done

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Example

count=1
while [ $count –ge 3 ]
do
echo $count
done

The statements within the until loop keep on getting executed till the exit status of the control
command remains false (1). When the exit status becomes ture (0), the control passes to the
first command that follows the body of the until loop (i.e. the first command after done).

There is a minor difference between the working of while and until loops. The while loop
executes till the exit status of the control command is true and terminates when the exit status
becomes false. Unlike this the until loop executes till the exit status of the control command is
false and terminates when this status becomes true. This difference is brought about more
clearly by the following programs.

 Using for with command line arguments

The for loop is more frequently used as compared to the while and the until loops. Its working
is also different than the other two loops. The for allows us to specify a list of values which the
control variable in the loop can take. The loop is then executed for each value mentioned in
the list.

Syntax

for variable in value1 value2 value3…

do
Statement block
done

Here the for loop would execute the same sequence of commands for values mentioned in the
list following the keyword in. Here is a simple example of the for loop.

Example

For $word in High on a hill was a lovely mountain

do
echo $word
done

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Output

High
on
a
hill
was
a
lovely
mountain

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