Introduction to Linux Concepts

--- Siva Kumar Bhuchipalli

Agenda:
 What is Linux ?
 Linux Distributions
 Directory Structure
 Shell
 Linux Commands Syntax
 File Handling Commands
 Text Processing Commands
 System Administration
 Advanced Commands
 Text Editors
 Vi Editor
 Pattern Matching
 Shell Scripting
 Environment Variables
What is Linux ?
 FOSS - Free Open Source Software
 Unix-type operating system developed under the GNU General
Public License
 Open source
 Popular
 Multi-user, Multitasking, Multiprocessor
 Why is it famous?
 Linux Provides Security
 Linux is Virus Free
 Supports Multiple Hardware Platforms
Linux Distributions
 Ubuntu
 CentOS
 Red Hat
 Fedora
 Mandrake
 Debian
 Etc…
Kernel
 Core of an operating system
 Interacts with the hardware
 First program to get loaded when the system
starts and runs till the session gets terminated
LFS Directory Structure
 Linux files are stored in Directories root
a single rooted,
hierarchical file system
 Files are stored in
directories (folders)
 If you omit the leading
/ then path name is
relative to the current
working directory User home
directories

Data files
LFS Directory Structure (Contd…)
 /bin System binaries, including the command shell
 /boot Boot-up routines
 /dev Device files for all your peripherals
 /etc System configuration files
 /home User directories
 /lib Shared libraries and modules
 /lost+found Lost-cluster files, recovered from a disk-check
 /mnt Mounted file-systems
 /opt Optional software
 /proc Kernel-processes pseudo file-system
 /root Administrator’s home directory
 /sbin System administration binaries
 /usr User-oriented software
 /var Various other files: mail, spooling and logging
Shell
 Command Line Interpreter
 Bridge between kernel and the user
 Types
 SH – Simple Shell
 BASH – Bourne Again Shell
 KSH – Korne Shell
 CSH – C Shell
 Bash is the default Shell Type
Linux Command Basics
 To execute a command, type its name and arguments at
the command line

ls -l /etc

Command name Arguments

Options
(flags)

ps all | grep java | wc -l

The output of the ps wc takes this input and counts the

command is sent to grep lines and its output printed on console

grep takes input and searches for

“java” passing these lines to wc
Linux Commands Types
 File Handling
 Text Processing
 System Administration
 Process Management
 Archival
 Network
 File Systems
 Advanced Commands
File Handling Commands
 mkdir - creating directory
• mkdir dirname
 rmdir – removing directory and its contents
• rmdir dirname
 cd – Change directory
• cd dirpath
 cp – Copying files
• cp file1 file2
 mv – Moving or renaming files
• mv oldfile newfile
 ls – list directory contents
• ls –[altr] dir_path
o ls – Lists all files in a directory
o ls –a – Lists all files (including hidden files)
o ls –l – Lists files in a directory along with
owner information, permission etc
 ln – Creating links between files
• ln file1 file2
File Handling commands (Contd…)
 find – search for files in a directory hierarchy
• find . -name "*.java“
 rm – remove files
 history – prints recently used commands
 pwd – prints name of current working directory
 Viewing users, processes
• who – List all Users
• who am I – List the current user
• pstree – displays all processes running in the system in
tree format
• ps – displays processes owned by the current user
 Help commands
• man, pinfo, info (man <cmd name>)
Text Processing
 cat – concatenate files and print on the standard output
• cat file1.txt file2.txt
 echo – display a line of text
• echo “I like Hadoop”
 grep - prints lines matching a pattern
• grep PATTERN FILE
 wc - prints the number of newlines, words, and bytes in
files
• wc – l  no of lines
• wc – w  no of words
• wc – c  no of characters
System Administration
 chmod – change file access permissions
• chmod 744 calculate.sh
• $chmod u+x file.txt – Gives execution permission to
the owner of the file
Owner/user – Who creates a file
Group – Collection of users
Others – Apart from the user and the users in a group
Permissions Value
Read 4
Write 2
Execute 1

-rwxrwxrwx – All permissions given for a file

drwxrwxrwx – All permissions given for a directory

chmod 777 file //gives all permission (r,w,x) for a file

 chown – change file owner and group

• chown siva myfile.txt
Advanced Commands
 su – change user ID or become super user
• su siva, su
 passwd – update a user’s authentication tokens(s)
 su siva, su
• passwd
 who – show who is logged on
 df (display filesystem): Displays how much disk space on every
mounted partition that is occupied.
• df -h uses MB and GB instead of blocks
 du (directory usage): Displays how much space a given directory
plus all of its subdirectories uses.
 reboot – reboot the system
 poweroff – power off the system
 uname -a: Prints all information about your system
 ctrl+R - search for previously entered commands
 clear: Clear terminal screen
 export: Set an environment variable
Advanced Commands (Contd…)
 head: Output the first part of file
 tail: Output the last part of files
 touch: Change file timestamps
 tr: Translate, squeeze, and/or delete characters
 ifconfig: Configure a network interface
 kill: Stop a process from running
 netstat: Networking information
 scp: Secure copy (remote file copy)
 ssh: Secure Shell client (remote login program)
 wget: Retrieve web pages or files via HTTP, HTTPS or FTP
 which: Search the user's $path for a program file
Advanced Commands (Contd…)
• echo `date +%Y-%M-%d`
2015-27-26
• echo `date +%Y-%M-%D`
2015-27-10/26/15
• echo `date +%Y`
2015
• echo `date +%D`
10/26/15
• echo `date +%d`
26
• echo `date +"%m_%d_%y_%H%M%S"`
10_26_15_003100
Text Editors
 Vi
 Vim
 nano
 gEdit
 kWrite
 TextPad
 Emacs
 And more…
VI Editor
 Popular text editor
 Just type vi <<filename>> at the prompt and hit
enter
 A new file will be opened
 Type the contents needed and save
 To save, press the Esc Key and then press : (colon)
wq and then enter
 To quit with out saving Esc + : + q and then enter
 Navigation
 Left -h
 Down - j
 Up -k
 Right -l
 Top of the screen – H (shift + h) //caps lock
will not work
 Middle of the screen – M (shift + m)
 Bottom of the screen – L (shift + l)
 $ - End Key, 0 – Home Key
Pattern Matching
 grep – GNU Regular Expression Processor
 Finds the words / patterns matching with the search and displays the
line containing the patterns.
 Search is limited to a file
grep abc hello.txt

Finds the occurance of abc in hello.txt and displays the line in the screen

grep –i abc hello.txt – Ignores case. Will find Abc, ABC, aBc, aBC etc
grep –c abc hello.txt – Displays the count of matches
grep –n abc hello.txt – Displays the matching lines along with line number
grep –v abc hello.txt – Displays the lines that donot have the pattern abc

^a – Starts with a
a$ - Ends with a
a* - a followed by any number of characters
a..b – a separated by 2 characters and then followed by b
Shell Scripting
 Open a file with extension .sh using any editor
 We can type any number of commands
 Save the file
 Execute the file
• sh file.sh
• ./file.sh
 For Loop
for (( i=0; i<5; i++ ))
do
Body of the loop
done
 If else condition
if [ condn ]
then
elif [ condn ]
then
else
fi
Shell Scripting
 These are the contents of a shell script called display:
 cat display
# This script displays the date, time, username and
# current directory.
echo "Date and time is:"
date
echo
echo "Your username is: `whoami` \\n"
echo "Your current directory is: \\c"
pwd

 Comments are represented with beginning # and are not interpreted

by the shell.
 The Regular UNIX Commands will be enclosed in the backquotes (`)
around the command whoami.
 The \\n is an option of the echo command that tells the shell to add
an extra carriage return at the end of the line. The \\c tells the shell to
stay on the same line
Passing arguments to the shell
 Arguments are passed from the command line into a shell program
using the positional parameters $1 through to $9. Each parameter
corresponds to the position of the argument on the command line.
 The positional parameter $0 refers to the command name or name of
the executable file containing the shell script.
 Only nine command line arguments can be accessed, but you can
access more than nine arguments using shift command.
while (( $# > 0 )) # or [ $# -gt 0 ]
do
echo $1
shift
done
 All the positional parameters can be referred to using the special
parameter $*. This is useful when passing filenames as arguments.
 $ cat printps
a2ps $* | lpr -Pps1
 $ printps elm.txt vi.ref msg
 This processes the three files given as arguments to the command
printps.
Special shell variables
 There are some variables which are set internally by the shell and
which are available to the user:

$1 - $9 these variables are the positional parameters.

$0 the name of the command currently being executed.
$# the number of positional arguments given to this
invocation of the shell.
$? the exit status of the last command executed is
given as a decimal string. When a command
completes successfully, it returns the exit status
of 0 (zero), otherwise it returns a non-zero exit
status.
$$ the process number of this shell - useful for
including in filenames, to make them unique.
$! the process id of the last command run in
the background.
$- the current options supplied to this invocation
of the shell.
$* a string containing all the arguments to the
shell, starting at $1.
Reading user input
 To read standard input into a shell script use the read command. For
example:
echo "Please enter your name:"
read name
echo "Welcome to Linux Class $name"
 This prompts the user for input, assigns this to the variable name and
then displays the value of this variable to standard output. If there is
more than one word in the input, each word can be assigned to a
different variable. Any words left over are assigned to the last named
variable. For example:
echo "Please enter your surname\n"
echo "followed by your first name: \c"
read name1 name2
echo "Welcome to Glasgow $name2 $name1"
Conditional statements
 Every Unix command returns a value on exit which the shell can
interrogate. This value is held in the read-only shell variable $?. A value
of 0 (zero) signifies success; anything other than 0 (zero) signifies failure.
 The if statement uses the exit status of the given command and
conditionally executes the statements following. The general syntax is:
if test
then
commands (if condition is true)
else
commands (if condition is false)
fi
 then, else and fi are shell reserved words and as such are only
recognized after a newline or ; (semicolon). Make sure that you end
each if construct with a fi statement. if statements may be nested:
if ...
then ...
else if ...
...
fi
fi
Conditional statements
 The elif statement can be used as shorthand for an else if statement.
For example:
if ...
then ...
elif ...
...
fi
 The && operator - You can use the && operator to execute a
command and, if it is successful, execute the next command in the list.
For example:
cmd1 && cmd2
This is a terse notation for:
if cmd1
then
cmd2
fi
 The || operator - You can use the || operator to execute a
command and, if it fails, execute the next command in the command
list. For example:
cmd1 || cmd2
Conditional statements
 Testing for files and variables with the test command
 The shell uses a command called test to evaluate conditional expressions. Full details of this
command can be found in the test manual page. For example:
if test ! -f $FILE
then
if test "$WARN" = "yes"
then
echo "$FILE does not exist"
fi
fi
 First, we test to see if the filename specified by the variable $FILE exists and is a regular file.
If it does not then we test to see if the variable $WARN is assigned the value yes, and if it is
a message that the filename does not exist is displayed.
 The case statement
case word in
pattern1) command(s)
;;
pattern2) command(s)
;;
patternN) command(s)
;;
esac
When all the commands are executed control is passed to the first statement after the esac.
Each list of commands must end with a double semi-colon (;;).
Conditional statements
 The for statement
 The for loop notation has the general form:
for var in list-of-words
do
commands
done
 commands is a sequence of one or more commands separated by a newline or ;
(semicolon). The reserved words do and done must be preceded by a newline or ;
(semicolon). Small loops can be written on a single line. For example:
 for var in list; do commands; done
 The while and until statements
 The while statement has the general form:
while command-list1
do
command-list2
done
 The commands in command-list1 are executed; and if the exit status of the last command
in that list is 0 (zero), the commands in command-list2 are executed. The sequence is
repeated as long as the exit status of command-list1 is 0 (zero).
 The until statement has the general form:
until command-list1
do
command-list2
done
 This is identical in function to the while command except that the loop is executed as long
as the exit status of command-list1 is non-zero.
Environment variables
 The set command will display all the global functions written by the
user
 The env command displays only the variables and not the functions
 We can reassign values for the variables either temporarily or
permanently
 Temporary
• export varname=value at the command prompt
 Permanent
• export varname=value in .bashrc file at the root directory