Linux System Administration: Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Certification Level 1 Exam 101

Linux System Administration
Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Certification Level 1

Exam 101
Copyright c GBdirect Ltd 2002

http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/
Summary Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
3 Work Effectively on the Unix Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
4 Process Text Streams Using Text Processing Filters . . . . . . . . 37
5 Perform Basic File Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
6 Use Unix Streams, Pipes and Redirects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ i

Detailed Contents
1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.1 Unix and Linux . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Unix System Architecture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Unix Philosophy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.4 What is Linux? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
1.5 Using a Linux System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.6 Linux Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.7 Logging Out . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.8 Command Syntax . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.9 Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.10 Creating Files with cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.11 Displaying Files’ Contents with cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.12 Deleting Files with rm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.13 Unix Command Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.14 Copying and Renaming Files with cp and mv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.15 Filename Completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.16 Command History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.17 Exercise 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.18 Exercise 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.19 Exercise 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
1.20 Exercise 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2 Getting Started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.1 Files and Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.2 Examples of Absolute Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
2.3 Current Directory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4 Making and Deleting Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.5 Relative Paths . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.6 Special Dot Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.7 Hidden Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.8 Paths to Home Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
2.9 Looking for Files in the System . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.10 Running Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2.11 Specifying Multiple Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
2.12 Finding Documentation for Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ ii

2.13 Specifying Files with Wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

2.14 Chaining Programs Together . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
2.15 Graphical and Text Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.16 Text Editors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
2.17 Exercise 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.18 Exercise 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
2.19 Exercise 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.20 Exercise 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
2.21 Exercise 5 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3 Work Effectively on the Unix Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

3.1 Shells . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.2 The Bash Shell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
3.3 Navigating the Filesystem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.4 Command-Line Arguments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
3.5 Syntax of Command-Line Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.6 Examples of Command-Line Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
3.7 Where Programs are Found . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.8 Setting Shell Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
3.9 Bash Configuration Variables . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.10 Using History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
3.11 Reusing History Items . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.12 Retrieving Arguments from the History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
3.13 Summary of Bash Editing Keys . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.14 Combining Commands on One Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3.15 Repeating Commands with for . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.16 Command Substitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
3.17 Finding Files with locate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.18 Finding Files More Flexibly: find . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
3.19 find Criteria . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.20 find Actions: Executing Programs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
3.21 Exercise 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.22 Exercise 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
3.23 Exercise 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
4 Process Text Streams Using Text Processing Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

4.1 Working with Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.2 Lines of Text . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
4.3 Filtering Text and Piping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.4 Displaying Files with less . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
4.5 Concatenating Files with cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
4.6 Counting Words and Lines with wc . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ iii

4.7 Sorting Lines of Text with sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

4.8 Removing Duplicate Lines with uniq . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
4.9 Selecting Parts of Lines with cut . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.10 Expanding Tabs to Spaces with expand . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
4.11 Using fmt to Format Text Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.12 Reading the Start of a File with head . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
4.13 Reading the End of a File with tail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.14 Numbering Lines of a File with nl . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4.15 Dumping Bytes of Binary Data with od . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.16 Paginating Text Files with pr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
4.17 Dividing Files into Chunks with split . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.18 Using split to Span Disks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
4.19 tac: Backwards cat . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.20 Translating Sets of Characters with tr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
4.21 tr Examples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.22 sed – the Stream Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
4.23 Substituting with sed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.24 Put Files Side-by-Side with paste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
4.25 Performing Database Joins with join . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.26 Exercise 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
4.27 Exercise 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
4.28 Exercise 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
5 Perform Basic File Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

5.1 Filesystem Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5.2 Directory and File Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
5.3 File Extensions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.4 Visiting Directories with cd . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
5.5 Going Back to Previous Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.6 Filename Completion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
5.7 Wildcard Patterns . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5.8 Copying Files with cp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
5.9 Examples of cp . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.10 Moving Files with mv . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
5.11 Deleting Files with rm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.12 Deleting Files with Peculiar Names . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
5.13 Making Directories with mkdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.14 Removing Directories with rmdir . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
5.15 Identifying Types of Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5.16 Changing Timestamps with touch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
5.17 Exercise 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
5.18 Exercise 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ iv

5.19 Exercise 3 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
5.20 Exercise 4 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
6 Use Unix Streams, Pipes and Redirects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

6.1 Standard Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.2 Standard Input . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
6.3 Standard Output . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.4 Standard Error . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
6.5 Pipes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
6.6 Connecting Programs to Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
6.7 Appending to Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6.8 Redirecting Multiple Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
6.9 Redirection with File Descriptors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.10 Running Programs with xargs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
6.11 tee . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6.12 Exercise 1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
6.13 Exercise 2 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70
© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ v

Linux System Administration Module 1: Introduction
Module 1
Introduction
© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ 1

1. Unix and Linux

■ Linux is based on Unix
◆ Unix philosophy
◆ Unix commands
◆ Unix standards and conventions
■ There is some variation between Unix operating systems
◆ Especially regarding system administration

◆ Often Linux-specific things in these areas
2. Unix System Architecture
applications
programs
X shell
kernel
hardware
■ The shell and the window environment are programs
■ Programs’ only access to hardware is via the kernel

3. Unix Philosophy
■ Multi-user
◆ A user needs an account to use a computer

◆ Each user must log in
◆ Complete separation of different users’ files and configuration
settings
■ Small components
◆ Each component should perform a single task

◆ Multiple components can be combined and chained together
for more complex tasks
◆ An individual component can be subsituted for another, without
affecting other components
4. What is Linux?
■ Linux kernel
◆ Developed by Linus Torvalds

◆ Strictly speaking, ‘Linux’ is just the kernel
■ Associated utilities
◆ Standard tools found on (nearly) all Linux systems

◆ Many GNU utilities
● Written by the Free Software Foundation
● Some claim the OS as a whole should be ‘GNU/Linux’
■ Linux distributions
◆ Kernel plus utilities plus other tools, packaged up for end users
◆ Generally with installation program
◆ Distributors include: Red Hat, Debian, SuSE, Mandrake

5. Using a Linux System

■ Login prompt displayed
◆ When Linux first loads after booting the computer

◆ After another user has logged out
■ Need to enter a username and password
■ The login prompt may be graphical or simple text
■ If text, logging in will present a shell
■ If graphical, logging in will present a desktop
◆ Some combination of mousing and keystrokes will make a

terminal window appear
◆ A shell runs in the terminal window
6. Linux Command Line

■ The shell is where commands are invoked
■ A command is typed at a shell prompt
◆ Prompt usually ends in a dollar sign ($)

■ After typing a command press Enter to invoke it
◆ The shell will try to obey the command

◆ Another prompt will appear
■ Example:
$ date
Thu Jun 14 12:28:05 BST 2001
$
◆ The dollar represents the prompt in this course – do not type it

7. Logging Out
■ To exit from the shell, use the exit command
■ Pressing Ctrl+D at the shell prompt will also quit the shell
■ Quitting all programs should log you out
◆ If in a text-only single-shell environment, exiting the shell

should be sufficient
◆ In a window environment, the window manager should have a
log out command for this purpose
■ After logging out, a new login prompt should be displayed
8. Command Syntax
■ Most commands take parameters
◆ Some commands require them

◆ Parameters are also known as arguments
◆ For example, echo simply displays its arguments:
$ echo
$ echo Hello there

Hello there
■ Commands are case-sensitive
◆ Usually lower-case
$ echo whisper
whisper
$ ECHO SHOUT
bash: ECHO: command not found

9. Files
■ Data can be stored in a file
■ Each file has a filename
◆ A label used to refer to a particular file

◆ Permitted characters include letters, digits, hyphens (-),
underscores ( ), and dots (.)
◆ Case-sensitive – NewsCrew.mov is a different file from
NewScrew.mov
■ The ls command lists the names of files
10. Creating Files with cat

■ There are many ways of creating a file
■ One of the simplest is with the cat command:

$ cat > shopping list
cucumber
bread
yoghurts
fish fingers
■ Note the greater-than sign (>) – this is necessary to create the file
■ The text typed is written to a file with the specified name
■ Press Ctrl+D after a line-break to denote the end of the file
◆ The next shell prompt is displayed

■ ls demonstrates the existence of the new file

11. Displaying Files’ Contents with cat

■ There are many ways of viewing the contents of a file
■ One of the simplest is with the cat command:

$ cat shopping list
cucumber
bread
yoghurts
fish fingers
■ Note that no greater-than sign is used
■ The text in the file is displayed immediately:
◆ Starting on the line after the command

◆ Before the next shell prompt
12. Deleting Files with rm

■ To delete a file, use the rm (‘remove’) command
■ Simply pass the name of the file to be deleted as an argument:

$ rm shopping list
■ The file and its contents are removed
◆ There is no recycle bin

◆ There is no ‘unrm’ command
■ The ls command can be used to confirm the deletion

13. Unix Command Feedback

■ Typically, succesful commands do not give any output
■ Messages are displayed in the case of errors
■ The rm is typical
◆ If it manages to delete the specified file, it does so silently

◆ There is no ‘File shopping list has been removed’ message
◆ But if the command fails for whatever reason, a message is
displayed
■ The silence can be be off-putting for beginners
■ It is standard behaviour, and doesn’t take long to get used to
14. Copying and Renaming Files with cp

and mv
■ To copy the contents of a file into another file, use the cp command:
$ cp CV.pdf old-CV.pdf
■ To rename a file use the mv (‘move’) command:

$ mv commitee minutes.txt committee minutes.txt
◆ Similar to using cp then rm

■ For both commands, the existing name is specified as the first
argument and the new name as the second
◆ If a file with the new name already exists, it is overwritten

15. Filename Completion

■ The shell can making typing filenames easier
■ Once an unambiguous prefix has been typed, pressing Tab will

automatically ‘type’ the rest
■ For example, after typing this:

$ rm sho
pressing Tab may turn it into this:
$ rm shopping list
■ This also works with command names
◆ For example, da may be completed to date if no other

commands start ‘da’
16. Command History

■ Often it is desired to repeat a previously-executed command
■ The shell keeps a command history for this purpose
◆ Use the Up and Down cursor keys to scroll through the list of
previous commands
◆ Press Enter to execute the displayed command
■ Commands can also be edited before being run
◆ Particularly useful for fixing a typo in the previous command

◆ The Left and Right cursor keys navigate across a command
◆ Extra characters can be typed at any point
◆ Backspace deletes characters to the left of the cursor
◆ Del and Ctrl+D delete characters to the right
● Take care not to log out by holding down Ctrl+D too long

17. Exercise 1
1 Log in.
2 Log out.
3 Log in again. Open a terminal window, to start a shell.
4 Exit from the shell; the terminal window will close.
5 Start another shell. Enter each of the following commands in turn.

The dollar ($) represents the prompt – do not type it.
■ $ date
■ $ whoami
■ $ hostname
■ $ uname
■ $ uptime
18. Exercise 2
1 Use the ls command to see if you have any files.
2 Create a new file using the cat command as follows:

$ cat > hello.txt
Hello world!
This is a text file.
Press Enter at the end of the last line, then Ctrl+D to denote the
end of the file.
3 Use ls again to verify that the new file exists.
4 Display the contents of the file.
5 Display the file again, but use the cursor keys to execute the same
command again without having to retype it.

19. Exercise 3
1 Create a second file. Call it secret-of-the-universe, and put in
whatever content you deem appropriate.
2 Check its creation with ls.
3 Display the contents of this file. Minimise the typing needed to do

this:
■ Scroll back through the command history to the command you
used to create the file.
■ Change that command to display secret-of-the-universe instead
of creating it.
20. Exercise 4
After each of the following steps, use ls and cat to verify what has
happened.
1 Copy secret-of-the-universe to a new file called answer.txt. Use Tab

to avoid typing the existing file’s name in full.
2 Now copy hello.txt to answer.txt. What’s happened now?
3 Delete the original file, hello.txt.
4 Rename answer.txt to message.
5 Try asking rm to delete a file called missing. What happens?
6 Try copying secret-of-the-universe again, but don’t specify a

filename to which to copy. What happens now?

Linux System Administration Module 2: Getting Started
Module 2
Getting Started

1. Files and Directories

■ A directory is a collection of files and/or other directories
◆ Because a directory can contain other directories, we get a

directory hierarchy
■ The ‘top level’ of the hierarchy is the root directory
■ Files and directories can be named by a path
◆ The root directory is referred to as /

◆ Other directories are referred to by name, and their names are
separated by /
■ If a path refers to a directory it can end in /
◆ Usually an extra slash at the end of a path makes no difference
2. Examples of Absolute Paths

■ An absolute path starts at the root of the directory hierarchy, and
names directories under it
■ In the root directory is a directory called bin, which contains a file

called ls:
/bin/ls
■ The following example will run the ls command, by specifying the

absolute path to it:
$ /bin/ls
■ We can use ls to list files in a specific directory by specifying the

absolute path:
$ ls /usr/share/doc/

3. Current Directory
■ Your shell has a current directory – the directory in which you are
working
■ Commands like ls use the current directory if none is specified
■ Use the pwd command to see what your current directory is:
$ pwd
/home/fred
■ Change the current directory with cd:

$ cd /mnt/cdrom
$ pwd
/mnt/cdrom
■ Use cd without specifying a path to get back to your home directory
4. Making and Deleting Directories

■ The mkdir command makes new, empty, directories
■ For example, to make a directory for storing company accounts:

$ mkdir Accounts
■ To delete an empty directory, use rmdir:

$ rmdir OldAccounts
■ Use rm with the -r option to delete directories and all the files they
contain:
$ rm -r OldAccounts
■ Be careful – rm can be a dangerous tool if misused

5. Relative Paths
■ Paths don’t have to start from the root directory
◆ A path which doesn’t start with / is a relative path

◆ It is relative to some other directory, usually the current
directory
■ For example, the following sets of directory changes both end up in

the same directory:
$ cd /usr/share/doc
$ cd /
$ cd usr
$ cd share/doc
■ Relative paths specify files inside directories in the same way as

absolute ones
6. Special Dot Directories

■ Every directory contains two special subdirectories which help
making relative paths:
◆ The directory .. points to the parent directory, so to list the files
in the directory which contains the current directory, use ls ..
◆ For example, if we start from /home/fred:
$ cd ..
$ pwd
/home
$ cd ..
$ pwd
/
■ The special directory . points to the directory it is in
◆ So ./foo is the same file as foo

7. Hidden Files
■ The special . and .. directories don’t show up when you do ls
◆ They are hidden files

■ Simple rule: files whose names start with . are hidden
■ Make ls display even the hidden files, by giving the -a option:

$ ls -a
. .. .bashrc .profile
■ Hidden files are often used for configuration files
■ You can still read hidden files – they just don’t get listed by ls by
default
8. Paths to Home Directories

■ The symbol ˜ is an abbreviation for your home directory
◆ So for user ‘fred’, the following are equivalent:

$ cd /home/fred/documents/
$ cd ˜/documents/
■ The ˜ is expanded by the shell, so programs only see the expanded

path
■ You can get the paths to other users’ home directories using ˜, for
example:
$ cat ˜alice/notes.txt
■ The following are all the same for user ‘fred’:

$ cd
$ cd ˜
$ cd /home/fred

9. Looking for Files in the System

■ The command locate lists files which contain the text you give
■ For example, to find files whose name contains the word ‘mkdir’:
$ locate mkdir
/usr/man/man1/mkdir.1.gz
/usr/man/man2/mkdir.2.gz
/bin/mkdir
...
■ locate is useful for finding files when you don’t know exactly what
they will be called, or where they are stored
■ For many users, graphical tools make it easier to navigate the

filesystem
◆ Also make file management simpler
10. Running Programs

■ Programs under Linux are files, stored in directories like /bin and
/usr/bin
■ Programs are run from the shell, simply by typing their name
■ Many programs take options, which are added after their name and
prefixed with -, for example:
$ ls
Accounts notes.txt report.txt
$ ls -l
drwxrwxr-x 2 fred users 4096 Jan 21 10:57 Accounts
-rw-rw-r-- 1 fred users 345 Jan 21 10:57 notes.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 fred users 3255 Jan 21 10:57 report.txt
■ Many programs accept filenames after the options
◆ Specify multiple files by separating them with spaces

11. Specifying Multiple Files

■ Most programs can be given a list of files
◆ For example, to delete several files at once:

$ rm oldnotes.txt tmp.txt stuff.doc
◆ To make several directories in one go:
$ mkdir Accounts Reports
■ The original use of cat was to join multiple files together
◆ For example, to list two files, one after another:

$ cat notes.txt morenotes.txt
■ If a filename contains spaces, or characters which are interpreted

by the shell (e.g., *, ˜), put single quotes around them:
$ rm ’Beatles - Strawberry Fields.mp3’
$ cat ’* important notes.txt *’
12. Finding Documentation for Programs

■ Use the man command to read the manual for a program
■ The manual for a program is called its man page
◆ Other things, like file formats and library functions also have
man pages
■ To read a man page, specify the name of the program to man:

$ man mkdir
■ To quit from the man page viewer press q
■ Man pages for programs usually have the following information:
◆ A description of what it does

◆ A list of options which it accepts
◆ Other information, such as the name of the author

13. Specifying Files with Wildcards

■ Use the * wildcard to specify multiple filenames to a program:
$ ls -l *.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 fred users 108 Nov 16 13:06 report.txt
-rw-rw-r-- 1 fred users 345 Jan 18 08:56 notes.txt
■ The shell expands the wildcard, and passes the full list of files to
the program
■ Just using * on its own will expand to all the files in the current
directory:
$ rm *
■ Names with wildcards in are called globs, and the process of

expanding them is called globbing
14. Chaining Programs Together

■ The who command lists the users currently logged in
■ The wc command counts bytes, words, and lines in its input
■ We combine them to count how many users are logged in:

$ who | wc -l
■ The | symbol makes a pipe between the two programs
◆ The output of who is fed into wc

■ The -l option makes wc print only the number of lines
■ Another example, to join all the text files together and count the
words, lines and characters in the result:
$ cat *.txt | wc

15. Graphical and Text Interfaces

■ Most modern desktop Linux systems provide a graphical user
interface (GUI)
■ Linux systems use the X window system to provide graphics
◆ X is just another program, not built-in to Linux

◆ Usually X is started automatically when the computer boots
■ Linux can be used without a GUI, just using a command line
■ Use Ctrl+Alt+F1 to switch to a text console – logging in works as it

does in X
◆ Use Ctrl+Alt+F2, Ctrl+Alt+F3, etc., to switch between virtual
terminals – usually about 6 are provided
◆ Use Ctrl+Alt+F7, or whatever is after the virtual terminals, to
switch back to X
16. Text Editors

■ Text editors are for editing plain text files
◆ Don’t provide advanced formatting, like word processors

■ The most popular editors are Emacs and Vim, both of which are
very sophisticated, but take time to learn
■ Simpler editors include nano, pico, kedit and gnotepad
■ Some programs run a text editor for you
◆ They use the $EDITOR variable to decide which editor to use

◆ Usually it is set to vi, but it can be changed
◆ Another example of the component philosophy

17. Exercise 1
1 Use the pwd command to find out what directory you are in.
2 If you are not in your home directory (/home/USERNAME) then use

cd without any arguments to go there, and do pwd again.
3 Use cd to visit the root directory, and list the files there. You should
see home among the list.
4 Change into the directory called home and again list the files
present. There should be one directory for each user, including the
user you are logged in as (you can use whoami to check that).
5 Change into your home directory to confirm that you have gotten
back to where you started.
18. Exercise 2
1 Create a text file in your home directory called shakespear,
containing the following text:
Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?
Thou art more lovely and more temperate
2 Rename it to sonnet-18.txt.
3 Make a new directory in your home directory, called poetry.
4 Move the poem file into the new directory.
5 Try to find a graphical directory-browsing program, and find your

home directory with it. You should also be able to use it to explore
some of the system directories.
6 Find a text editor program and use it to display and edit the sonnet.

19. Exercise 3
1 From your home directory, list the files in the directory /usr/share.
2 Change to that directory, and use pwd to check that you are in the
right place. List the files in the current directory again, and then list
the files in the directory called docs.
3 Next list the files in the parent directory, and the directory above
that.
4 Try the following command, and make sure you understand the
result: echo ˜.
5 Use cat to display the contents of a text file which resides in your
home directory (create one if you haven’t already), using the ˜/
syntax to refer to it. It shouldn’t matter what your current directory is
when you run the command.
20. Exercise 4
1 Use the hostname command, with no options, to print the hostname
of the machine you are using.
2 Use man to display some documentation on the hostname

command. Find out how to make it print the IP address of the
machine instead of the hostname. You will need to scroll down the
manpage to the ‘Options’ section.
3 Use the locate command to find files whose name contains the
text ‘hostname’. Which of the filenames printed contain the actual
hostname program itself?

21. Exercise 5
1 The * wildcard on its own is expanded by the shell to a list of all the
files in the current directory. Use the echo command to see the
result (but make sure you are in a directory with a few files or
directories first)
2 Use quoting to make echo print out an actual * symbol.
3 If you created a poetry directory earlier, augment it with another

file, sonnet-29.txt:
When in disgrace with Fortune and men’s eyes,
I all alone beweep my outcast state,
4 Use the cat command to display both of the poems, using a

wildcard.
5 Finally, use the rm command to delete the poetry directory and the
poems in it.

Linux System Administration Module 3: Work Effectively on the Unix Command Line
Module 3
Work Effectively on the Unix Command Line

1. Shells
■ A shell provides an interface between the user and the operating
system kernel
■ Either a command interpreter or a graphical user interface
■ Traditional Unix shells are command-line interfaces (CLIs)
■ Usually started automatically when you log in
User
Shell
Kernel
2. The Bash Shell

■ Linux’s most popular command interpreter is called bash
◆ The Bourne-Again Shell

◆ More sophisticated than the original sh by Steve Bourne
◆ Can be run as sh, as a replacement for the original Unix shell
■ Gives you a prompt and waits for a command to be entered
◆ Traditionally, the prompt ends in $

◆ Press Enter to run a command
■ Although we concentrate on Bash, the shell tcsh is also popular
◆ Based on the design of the older C Shell (csh)

3. Navigating the Filesystem

■ Use the shell’s builtin command cd to visit a directory
■ The shell’s pwd built-in command prints the current directory
◆ These builtins are part of the shell

■ For example:
$ pwd
/home/jeff
$ cd email
$ pwd
/home/jeff/email
■ The commands entered consist of words
◆ Separated by spaces (whitespace)

◆ The first word is the command to run
◆ Subsequent words are options or arguments to the command
4. Command-Line Arguments
■ The words after the command name are passed to a command as
a list of arguments
■ Most commands group these words into two categories:
◆ Options, usually starting with one or two hyphens

◆ Filenames, directories, etc., on which to operate
■ The options usually come first, but for most commands they do not
need to
■ There is a special option ‘--’ which indicates the end of the options
◆ Nothing after the double hyphen is treated as an option, even if

it starts with -

5. Syntax of Command-Line Options

■ Most Unix commands have a consistent syntax for options:
◆ Single letter options start with a hyphen, e.g., -B

◆ Less cryptic options are whole words or phrases, and start with
two hyphens, for example --ignore-backups
■ Some options themselves take arguments
◆ Usually the argument is the next word: sort -o output file

■ A few programs use different styles of command-line options
◆ For example, long options (not single letters) sometimes start

with a single -, rather than --
6. Examples of Command-Line Options

■ List all the files in the current directory:
ls
■ List the files in the ‘long format’ (giving more information):

ls -l
■ List full information about some specific files:

ls -l notes.txt report.txt
■ List full information about all the .txt files:

ls -l *.txt
■ List all files in long format, even the hidden ones:

ls -l -a
ls -la

7. Where Programs are Found

■ The location of a program can be specified explicitly:
◆ ./sample runs the sample program in the current directory

◆ /bin/ls runs the ls command in the /bin directory
■ Otherwise, the shell looks in standard places for the program
◆ The variable called $PATH lists the directories to search in

◆ Directory names are separated by colon, for example:
$ echo $PATH
/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
◆ Running whoami will run /bin/whoami or /usr/bin/whoami or
/usr/local/bin/whoami (whichever is found first)
8. Setting Shell Variables

■ Shell variables can be used to store temporary values
■ Print out the value of a shell variable with the echo command:
echo $files
■ Set a shell variable’s value as follows:

files="notes.txt report.txt"
Note that the $ must be omitted when setting a variable
■ Shell variables are private to the shell, but environment variables

are passed to programs run from the shell
◆ In Bash, use export to put a shell variable in the environment:
files="notes.txt report.txt"
export files
■ New values can be built from old ones: PATH="$PATH:/sbin"

9. Bash Configuration Variables

■ Some variables contain information which Bash itself uses
◆ The variable called $PS1 (Prompt String 1) specifies how to

display the shell prompt
■ Use the echo command with a $ sign before a varable name to see
its value, e.g.
$ echo $PS1
[\u@\h \W]\$
■ The special characters \u, \h and \W represent shell variables

containing, respectively, your user/login name, machine’s hostname
and current working directory, i.e.,
◆ $USER, $HOSTNAME, $PWD
10. Using History

■ Previously executed commands can be edited with the Up or
Ctrl+P keys
■ This allows old commands to be executed again without re-entering
■ Bash stores a history of old commands in memory
◆ Use the builtin command history to display the lines

remembered
◆ History is stored between sessions in the file ˜/.bash history
■ Bash uses the readline library to read input from the user
◆ Allows Emacs-like editing of the command line

◆ Left and Right cursor keys, and Delete work as expected

11. Reusing History Items

■ Previous commands can be used to build new commands, using
history expansion
■ Use !! to refer to the previous command, for example:

$ rm index.html
$ echo !!
echo rm index.html
rm index.html
■ More often useful is !string , which inserts the most recent

command which started with string
◆ Useful for repeating particular commands without modification:
$ ls *.txt
notes.txt report.txt
$ !ls
ls *.txt
notes.txt report.txt
12. Retrieving Arguments from the History

■ The event designator !$ refers to the last argument of the previous
command:
$ ls -l long file name.html
-rw-r--r-- 1 jeff users 11170 Oct 31 10:47 long file name.html
$ rm !$
rm long file name.html
■ Similarly, !ˆ refers to the first argument
■ The pattern ˆstringˆreplacementˆ replaces the first

occurrence of string with replacement in the previous
command, and runs it:
$ echo $HOTSNAME
$ ˆTSˆSTˆ
echo $HOSTNAME
tiger

13. Summary of Bash Editing Keys

■ These are the basic editing commands, by default:
◆ Right – move cursor to the right

◆ Left – move cursor to the left
◆ Up – previous history line
◆ Down – next history line
◆ Ctrl+A – move to start of line
◆ Ctrl+E – move to end of line
◆ Ctrl+D – delete current character
■ There are alternative keys, as for the Emacs editor, which can be
more comfortable to use than the cursor keys
■ There are other, less often used keys, which are documented in the
bash man page (section ‘Readline’)
14. Combining Commands on One Line

■ You can write multiple commands on one line by separating them
with ;
■ Useful when the first command might take a long time:

time-consuming-program; ls
■ Alternatively, use && to arrange for subsequent commands to run

only if earlier ones failed:
time-consuming-potentially-failing-program && ls

15. Repeating Commands with for

■ Run multiple commands on one line by separating them with ;
■ The same commands can be repeated using for
◆ Syntax: for varname in list; do commands...; done

■ For example, to rename all .txt files to .txt.old:
$ for file in *.txt;
> do
> mv -v $file $file.old;
> done
barbie.txt -> barbie.txt.old
food.txt -> food.txt.old
quirks.txt -> quirks.txt.old
■ The command above could also be written on a single line
■ The value of the variable can be expanded by prefixing it with a

dollar sign (e.g., $file)
16. Command Substitution

■ Command substitution allows the output of one command to be
used as arguments to another
■ For example, use the locate command to find all files called
manual.html and print information about them with ls:
ls -l $(locate manual.html)
ls -l ‘locate manual.html‘
■ The punctuation marks on the second form are opening single

quote characters, called backticks
◆ The $() form is usually preferred, but backticks are widely used
■ Newlines are stripped from the output before the substitution
■ Another example: use vi to edit the last of the files found:

vi $(locate manual.html | tail -1)

17. Finding Files with locate

■ The locate command is a simple and fast way to find files
■ For example, to find files relating to the email program mutt:

locate mutt
■ The locate command searches a database of filenames
◆ The database needs to be updated regularly

◆ Usually this is done automatically with cron
◆ But locate will not find files created since the last update
■ The -i option makes the search case-insensitive
■ -r treats the pattern as a regular expression, rather than a simple

string
18. Finding Files More Flexibly: find

■ locate only finds files by name
■ find can find files by any combination of a wide number of criteria,

including name
■ Syntax: find directories criteria
■ Simplest possible example: find .
■ Finding files with a simple criterion:

$ find . -name manual.html
Looks for files under the current directory whose name is
manual.html
■ The criteria always begin with a single hyphen, even though they
have long names

19. find Criteria

■ find accepts many different criteria; two of the most useful are:
◆ -name pattern: selects files whose name matches the

shell-style wildcard pattern
◆ -type d, -type f: select directories or plain files, respectively
■ You can have complex selections involving ‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘not’
20. find Actions: Executing Programs

■ find lets you specify an action for each file found; the default action
is simply to print out the name
◆ You can alternatively write that explicitly as -print
■ Other actions include executing a program; for example, to delete
all files whose name starts with manual:
find . -name ’manual*’ -exec rm ’{}’ ’;’
■ The command rm ’{}’ is run for each file, with ’{}’ replaced by
the filename
■ The {} and ; are required by find, but must be quoted to protect

them from the shell

21. Exercise 1
1 Use the df command to display the amount of used and available
space on your hard drive.
2 Check the man page for df, and use it to find an option to the
command which will display the free space in a more
human-friendly form. Try both the single-letter and long-style
options.
3 Run the shell, bash, and see what happens. Remember that you
were already running it to start with. Try leaving the shell you have
started with the exit or logout commands.
22. Exercise 2
1 Try ls with the -a and -A options. What is the difference between
them?
2 Write a for loop which goes through all the files in a directory and
prints out their names with echo. If you write the whole thing on one
line, then it will be easy to repeat it using the command line history.
3 Change the loop so that it goes through the names of the people in
the room (which needn’t be the names of files) and print greetings
to them.
4 Of course, a simpler way to print a list of filenames is echo *. Why

might this be useful, when we usually use the ls command?

23. Exercise 3
1 Use the find command to list all the files and directories under
your home directory. Try the -type d and -type f criteria to show
just files and just directories.
2 Use locate to find files whose name contains the string ‘bashbug’.
Try the same search with find, looking over all files on the system.
You’ll need to use the * wildcard at the end of the pattern to match
files with extensions.
3 Find out what find’s -iname criterion does.

Linux System Administration Module 4: Process Text Streams Using Text Processing Filters
Module 4
Process Text Streams Using Text Process-

ing Filters

1. Working with Text Files

■ Unix-like systems are designed to manipulate text very well
■ The same techniques can be used with plain text, or text-based

formats
◆ Most Unix configuration files are plain text
■ Text is usually in the ASCII character set
◆ Non-English text might use the ISO-8859 character sets

◆ Unicode is better, but unfortunately many Linux command-line
utilities don’t (directly) support it yet
2. Lines of Text
■ Text files are naturally divided into lines
■ In Linux, a line ends in a line feed character
◆ Character number 10, hexadecimal 0x0A

■ Other operating systems use different combinations
◆ Windows and DOS use a carriage return followed by a line feed

◆ Macintosh systems use only a carriage return
◆ Programs are available to convert between the various formats

3. Filtering Text and Piping

■ The Unix philosophy: use small programs, and link them together
as needed
■ Each tool should be good at one specific job
■ Join programs together with pipes
◆ Indicated with the pipe character: |

◆ The first program prints text to its standard output
◆ That gets fed into the second program’s standard input
■ For example, to connect the output of echo to the input of wc:
$ echo "count these words, boy" | wc
4. Displaying Files with less

■ If a file is too long to fit in the terminal, display it with less:
$ less README
■ less also makes it easy to clear the terminal of other things, so is

useful even for small files
■ Often used on the end of a pipe line, especially when it is not

known how long the output will be:
$ wc *.txt | less
■ Doesn’t choke on strange characters, so it won’t mess up your

terminal (unlike cat)

5. Concatenating Files with cat

■ The cat filter concatenates the contents of all the files named on its
command line
■ More commonly used with just one file to quickly send its contents
to the screen:
$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
domain gbdirect.co.uk
nameserver 127.0.0.1
nameserver 192.168.100.12
6. Counting Words and Lines with wc

■ Count characters, words and lines in a file
■ If used with multiple files, outputs counts for each file, and a
combined total
■ Options:
◆ -c output character count

◆ -l output line count
◆ -w output word count
◆ Default is -clw
■ Examples: display word count for essay.txt:

$ wc -w essay.txt
■ Display the total number of lines in several text files:

$ wc -l *.txt

7. Sorting Lines of Text with sort

■ The sort filter reads lines of text and prints them sorted into order
■ For example, to sort a list of words into dictionary order:

$ sort words > sorted-words
■ The -f option makes the sorting case-insensitive
■ The -n option sorts numerically, rather than lexicographically
8. Removing Duplicate Lines with uniq

■ Use uniq to find unique lines in a file
◆ Removes consecutive duplicate lines

◆ Usually give it sorted input, to remove all duplicates
■ Example: find out how many unique words are in a dictionary:
$ sort /usr/dict/words | uniq | wc -w
■ sort has a -u option to do this, without using a separate program:

$ sort -u /usr/dict/words | wc -w
■ sort | uniq can do more than sort -u, though:
◆ uniq -c counts how many times each line appeared

◆ uniq -u prints only unique lines
◆ uniq -d prints only duplicated lines

9. Selecting Parts of Lines with cut

■ Used to select columns or fields from each line of input
■ Select a range of
◆ Characters, with -c
◆ Fields, with -f
■ Field separator specified with -d (defaults to tab)
■ A range is written as start and end position: e.g., 3-5
◆ Either can be missed out

◆ The first byte, character or field is numbered 1, not 0
■ Example: select usernames of logged in users:
$ who | cut -d" " -f1 | sort -u
10. Expanding Tabs to Spaces with expand

■ Used to replace tabs with spaces in files
■ Tab size (maximum number of spaces for each tab) can be set
with -t number
◆ Default tab size is 8
■ To only change tabs at the beginning of lines, use -i
■ Example: change all tabs in foo.txt to three spaces, display it to the

screen (both of these are the same):
$ expand -t 3 foo.txt
$ expand -3 foo.txt

11. Using fmt to Format Text Files

■ Arranges words nicely into lines of consistent length
■ Use -u to convert to uniform spacing
◆ One space between words, two between sentences

■ Use -w width to set the maximum line width in characters
◆ Defaults to 75
■ Example: change the line length of notes.txt to a maximum of 70
characters, and display it on the screen:
$ fmt -w 70 notes.txt | less
12. Reading the Start of a File with head

■ Prints the top of its input, and discards the rest
■ Set the number of lines to print with -n lines or -lines
◆ Defaults to ten lines

■ View the headers of a HTML document called homepage.html:
$ head homepage.html
■ Print the first line of a text file (two alternatives):

$ head -n 1 notes.txt
$ head -1 notes.txt

13. Reading the End of a File with tail

■ Similar to head, but prints lines at the end of a file
■ The -f option watches the file forever
◆ Continually updates the display as new entries are appended to

the end of the file
◆ Kill it with Ctrl+C
■ The option -n is the same as in head (number of lines to print)
■ Example: monitor HTTP requests on a webserver:

$ tail -f /var/log/httpd/access log
14. Numbering Lines of a File with nl

■ Add a line number to each line of the input
■ There are options to finely control the formating
■ By default, blank lines aren’t numbered
◆ The option -ba numbers every line

◆ cat -n also numbers lines, including blank ones

15. Dumping Bytes of Binary Data with od

■ Prints the numeric values of the bytes in a file
■ Useful for studying files with non-text characters
■ By default, prints two byte words in octal
■ Specify an alternative with the -t option
◆ Give a letter to indicate base: o for octal, x for hexadecimal, u

for unsigned decimal, etc.
◆ Can be followed by the number of bytes per word
◆ Add z to show ASCII equivalents alongside the numbers
◆ A useful format is given by od -t x1z – hexadecimal, one byte
words, with ASCII
■ Alternatives to od include xxd and hexdump
16. Paginating Text Files with pr

■ Convert a text file into paginated text, with headers and page fills
■ Rarely useful for modern printers
■ Options:
◆ -d double spaced output

◆ -h header change from the default header to header
◆ -l lines change the default lines on a page from 66 to
lines
◆ -o width set (‘offset’) the left margin to width
■ Example:
$ pr -h "My Thesis" thesis.txt | lpr

17. Dividing Files into Chunks with split

■ Splits files into equal sized segments
■ Syntax: split [options] [input] [output-prefix]
■ Use -l n to split a file into n-line chunks
■ Use -b n to split into chunks of n bytes each
■ Output files are named using the specified output name with aa, ab,
ac, etc., added to the end of the prefix
■ Example: Split essay.txt into 30 line files, and save the output to
files short aa, short ab, etc:
$ split -l 30 essay.txt short
18. Using split to Span Disks

■ If a file is too big to fit on a single floppy, Zip or CD-ROM disk, it can
be split into small enough chunks
■ Use the -b option, and with the k and m sufixes to give the chunk
size in kilobytes or megabytes
■ For example, to split the file database.tar.gz into pieces small

enough to fit on Zip disks:
$ split -b 90m database.tar.gz zip-
■ Use cat to put the pieces back together:

$ cat zip-* > database.tar.gz

19. tac: Backwards cat

■ Similar to cat, but in reverse
■ Prints the last line of the input first, the penultimate line second,
and so on
■ Example: show a list of logins and logouts, but with the most recent
events at the end:
$ last | tac
20. Translating Sets of Characters with tr

■ Translate one set of characters to another
■ Usage: tr [options] start-set end-set
■ Replaces all characters in start-set with the corresponding

characters in end-set
■ Cannot accept a file as an argument, but uses the standard input

and output
■ Options:
◆ -d deletes characters in start-set instead of translating

them
◆ -s replaces sequences of identical characters with just one
(squeezes them)

21. tr Examples
■ Replace all uppercase characters in input-file with lowercase
characters (two alternatives):
$ cat input-file | tr A-Z a-z
$ tr A-Z a-z < input-file
■ Delete all occurrences of z in story.txt:

$ cat story.txt | tr -d z
■ Run together each sequence of repeated f characters in lullaby.txt

to with just one f:
$ tr -s f < lullaby.txt
22. sed – the Stream Editor

■ sed uses a simple script to process each line of a file
■ Specify the script file with -f filename
■ Or give individual commands with -e command
■ For example, if you have a script called spelling.sed which corrects

your most common mistakes, you can feed a file through it:
$ sed -f spelling.sed < report.txt > corrected.txt

23. Substituting with sed

■ Use the s/pattern/replacement/ command to substitute text
matching the pattern with the replacement
◆ Add the /g modifier to replace every occurrence on each line,
rather than just the first one
■ For example, replace ‘thru’ with ‘through’:

$ sed -e ’s/thru/through/g’ input-file > output-file
■ sed has more complicated facilities which allow commands to be

executed conditionally
◆ Can be used as a very basic (but unpleasantly difficult!)
programming language
24. Put Files Side-by-Side with paste

■ paste takes lines from two or more files and puts them in columns
of the output
■ Use -d char to set the delimiter between fields in the output
◆ The default is tab

◆ Giving -d more than one character sets different delimiters
between each pair of columns
■ Example: assign passwords to users, separating them with a colon:

$ paste -d: usernames passwords > .htpasswd

25. Performing Database Joins with join

■ Does a database-style ‘inner join’ on two tables, stored in text files
■ The -t option sets the field delimiter
◆ By default, fields are separated by any number of spaces or

tabs
■ Example: show details of suppliers and their products:

$ join suppliers.txt products.txt | less
■ The input files must be sorted!
■ This command is rarely used – databases have this facility built in
26. Exercise 1
1 Type in the example on the cut slide to display a list of users
logged in. (Try just who on its own first to see what is happening.)
2 Arrange for the list of usernames in who’s output to be sorted, and

remove any duplicates.
3 Try the command last to display a record of login sessions, and

then try reversing it with tac. Which is more useful? What if you
pipe the output into less?
4 Use sed to correct the misspelling ‘enviroment’ to ‘environment’.

Use it on a test file, containing a few lines of text, to check it. Does
it work if the misspelling occurs more than once on the same line?
5 Use nl to number the lines in the output of the previous question.

27. Exercise 2
1 Try making an empty file and using tail -f to monitor it. Then add
lines to it from a different terminal, using a command like this:
$ echo "testing" >>filename
2 Once you have written some lines into your file, use tr to display it
with all occurances of the letters A–F changed to the numbers 0–5.
3 Try looking at the binary for the ls command (/bin/ls) with less.
You can use the -f option to force it to display the file, even though
it isn’t text.
4 Try viewing the same binary with od. Try it in its default mode, as
well as with the options shown on the slide for outputting in
hexadecimal.
28. Exercise 3
1 Use the split command to split the binary of the ls command into
1Kb chunks. You might want to create a directory especially for the
split files, so that it can all be easily deleted later.
2 Put your split ls command back together again, and run it to make
sure it still works. You will have to make sure you are running the
new copy of it, for example ./my ls, and make sure that the
program is marked as ‘executable’ to run it, with the following
command:
$ chmod a+rx my ls

Linux System Administration Module 5: Perform Basic File Management
Module 5
Perform Basic File Management

1. Filesystem Objects
■ A file is a place to store data: a possibly-empty sequence of bytes
■ A directory is a collection of files and other directories
■ Directories are organized in a hierarchy, with the root directory at

the top
◆ The root directory is referred to as /
home/ bin/
jeff/ cp rm
2. Directory and File Names

■ Files and directories are organized into a filesystem
■ Refer to files in directories and sub-directories by separating their

names with /, for example:
/bin/ls
/usr/dict/words
/home/jeff/recipe
■ Paths to files either start at / (absolute) or from some ‘current’

directory

3. File Extensions
■ It’s common to put an extension, beginning with a dot, on the end
of a filename
■ The extension indicates the type of the file:

.txt Text file
.gif Graphics Interchange Format image
.jpg Joint Photographic Experts Group image
.mp3 MPEG-2 Layer 3 audio
.gz Compressed file
.tar Unix ‘tape archive’ file
.tar.gz, .tgz Compressed archive file
■ On Unix and Linux, file extensions are entirely a matter of

convention – the operating system itself ignores them
◆ Only a few specific programs use extensions to guess what
type a file is
4. Visiting Directories with cd

■ Use cd to change the current working directory
◆ If no argument is given, it changes to your home directory

■ Use pwd to find out what the current directory is
■ For example:
$ cd /usr/src
$ pwd
/usr/src
■ To switch back to the previous directory: cd -

5. Going Back to Previous Directories

■ The pushd command takes you to another directory, like cd
◆ But also saves the current directory, so that you can go back
later
■ For example, to visit Fred’s home directory, and then go back to

where you started from:
$ pushd ˜fred
$ cd Work
$ ls
...
$ popd
■ popd takes you back to the directory where you last did pushd
■ dirs will list the directories you can pop back to
6. Filename Completion
■ Modern shells help you type the names of files and directories by
completing partial names
■ Type the start of the name (enough to make it unambiguous) and

press Tab
■ For an ambiguous name (there are several possible completions),

the shell can list the options:
◆ For Bash, type Tab twice in succession
◆ For C shells, type Ctrl+D
■ Both of these shells will automatically escape spaces and special
characters in the filenames

7. Wildcard Patterns
■ Give commands multiple files by specifying patterns
■ Use the symbol * to match any part of a filename:

$ ls *.txt
accounts.txt letter.txt report.txt
■ Just * produces the names of all files in the current directory
■ The wildcard ? matches exactly one character:

$ rm -v data.?
removing data.1
removing data.2
removing data.3
■ Note: wildcards are turned into filenames by the shell, so the

program you pass them to can’t tell that those names came from
wildcard expansion
8. Copying Files with cp

■ Syntax: cp [options] source-file destination-file
■ Copy multiple files into a directory: cp files directory
■ Common options:
◆ -f, force overwriting of destination files

◆ -i, interactively prompt before overwriting files
◆ -a, archive, copy the contents of directories recursively

9. Examples of cp
■ Copy /etc/smb.conf to the current directory:
$ cp /etc/smb.conf .
■ Create an identical copy of a directory called work, and call it

work-backup:
$ cp -a work work-backup
■ Copy all the GIF and JPEG images in the current directory into
images:
$ cp *.gif *.jpeg images/
10. Moving Files with mv

■ mv can rename files or directories, or move them to different
directories
■ It is equivalent to copying and then deleting
◆ But is usually much faster

■ Options:
◆ -f, force overwrite, even if target already exists

◆ -i, ask user interactively before overwriting files
■ For example, to rename poetry.txt to poems.txt:
$ mv poetry.txt poems.txt
■ To move everything in the current directory somewhere else:

$ mv * ˜/old-stuff/

11. Deleting Files with rm

■ rm deletes (‘removes’) the specified files
■ You must have write permission for the directory the file is in to
remove it
■ Use carefully if you are logged in as root!
■ Options:
◆ -f, delete write-protected files without prompting

◆ -i, interactive – ask the user before deleting files
◆ -r, recursively delete files and directories
■ For example, clean out everything in /tmp, without prompting to
delete each file:
$ rm -rf /tmp/*
12. Deleting Files with Peculiar Names

■ Some files have names which make them hard to delete
■ Files that begin with a minus sign:

$ rm ./-filename
$ rm -- -filename
■ Files that contain peculiar characters – perhaps characters that you

can’t actually type on your keyboard:
◆ Write a wildcard pattern that matches only the name you want
to delete:
$ rm -i ./name-with-funny-characters*
◆ The ./ forces it to be in the current directory
◆ Using the -i option to rm makes sure that you won’t delete
anything else by accident

13. Making Directories with mkdir

■ Syntax: mkdir directory-names
■ Options:
◆ -p, create intervening parent directories if they don’t already

exist
◆ -m mode, set the access permissions to mode
■ For example, create a directory called mystuff in your home
directory with permissions so that only you can write, but eveyone
can read it:
$ mkdir -m 755 ˜/mystuff
■ Create a directory tree in /tmp using one command with three

subdirectories called one, two and three:
$ mkdir -p /tmp/one/two/three
14. Removing Directories with rmdir

■ rmdir deletes empty directories, so the files inside must be deleted
first
■ For example, to delete the images directory:

$ rm images/*
$ rmdir images
■ For non-empty directories, use rm -r directory
■ The -p option to rmdir removes the complete path, if there are no

other files and directories in it
◆ These commands are equivalent:
$ rmdir -p a/b/c
$ rmdir a/b/c a/b a

15. Identifying Types of Files

■ The data in files comes in various different formats (executable
programs, text files, etc.)
■ The file command will try to identify the type of a file:

$ file /bin/bash
/bin/bash: ELF 32-bit LSB executable, Intel 80386, version 1,
dynamically linked (uses shared libs), stripped
■ It also provides extra information about some types of file
■ Useful to find out whether a program is actually a script:

$ file /usr/bin/zless
/usr/bin/zless: Bourne shell script text
■ If file doesn’t know about a specific format, it will guess:

$ file /etc/passwd
/etc/passwd: ASCII text
16. Changing Timestamps with touch

■ Changes the access and modification times of files
■ Creates files that didn’t already exist
■ Options:
◆ -a, change only the access time

◆ -m, change only the modification time
◆ -t [YYYY]MMDDhhmm[.ss], set the timestamp of the file to
the specified date and time
◆ GNU touch has a -d option, which accepts times in a more
flexible format
■ For example, change the time stamp on homework to January 20

2001, 5:59p.m.
$ touch -t 200101201759 homework

17. Exercise 1
1 Just after you’ve logged in or opened a terminal window, what
directory is your current directory? (The pwd command might be
useful here.)
2 Change directory to /etc and then /tmp. Each time use pwd to check
that you got to the right place, and ls to see what files are there.
3 From /tmp, use cd .. and see where you end up. Then try it again
from your working directory.
4 Find out what files are in /bin, without changing your current
directory. You should recognise the names of some of the programs
stored there.
5 List the files in /usr/bin and /usr/local/bin (if it exists). Use the Tab
key to save typing.
18. Exercise 2
1 Use cd to go to your home directory, and create a new directory
there called dog.
2 Create another directory within that one called cat, and another
within that called mouse.
3 Remove all three directories. You can either remove them one at a
time, or all at once.
4 If you can delete directories with rm -r, what is the point of using
rmdir for empty directories?
5 Try creating the dog/cat/mouse directory structure with a single
command.

19. Exercise 3
1 Copy the file /etc/passwd to your home directory, and then use cat
to see what’s in it.
2 Rename it to users using the mv command.
3 Make a directory called programs and copy everything from /bin

into it.
4 Delete all the files in the programs directory.
5 Delete the empty programs directory and the users file.
20. Exercise 4
1 The touch command can be used to create new empty files. Try
that now, picking a name for the new file:
$ touch baked-beans
2 Get details about the file using the ls command:

$ ls -l baked-beans
3 Wait for a minute, and then try the previous two steps again, and
see what changes. What happens when we don’t specify a time to
touch?
4 Try setting the timestamp on the file to a value in the future.
5 When you’re finished with it, delete the file.

Linux System Administration Module 6: Use Unix Streams, Pipes and Redirects
Module 6
Use Unix Streams, Pipes and Redirects

1. Standard Files
■ Processes are connected to three standard files
STANDARD INPUT
PROCESS
STANDARD STANDARD
OUTPUT ERROR
■ Many programs open other files as well
2. Standard Input
■ Programs can read data from their standard input file
■ Abbreviated to stdin
■ By default, this reads from the keyboard
■ Characters typed into an interactive program (e.g., a text editor) go

to stdin

3. Standard Output
■ Programs can write data to their standard output file
■ Abbreviated to stdout
■ Used for a program’s normal output
■ By default this is printed on the terminal
4. Standard Error
■ Programs can write data to their standard error output
■ Standard error is similar to standard output, but used for error and
warning messages
■ Abbreviated to stderr
■ Useful to separate program output from any program errors
■ By default this is written to your terminal
◆ So it gets ‘mixed in’ with the standard output

5. Pipes
■ A pipe channels the output of one program to the input of another
◆ Allows programs to be chained together

◆ Programs in the chain run concurrently
■ Use the vertical bar: |
◆ Sometimes known as the ‘pipe’ character

■ Programs don’t need to do anything special to use pipes
◆ They read from stdin and write to stdout as normal

■ For example, pipe the output of echo into the program rev (which
reverses each line of its input):
$ echo Happy Birthday! | rev
!yadhtriB yppaH
6. Connecting Programs to Files

■ Redirection connects a program to a named file
■ The < symbol indicates the file to read input from:

$ wc < thesis.txt
◆ The file specified becomes the program’s standard input

■ The > symbol indicates the file to write output to:
$ who > users.txt
◆ The program’s standard output goes into the file

◆ If the file already exists, it is overwritten
■ Both can be used at the same time:
$ filter < input-file > output-file

7. Appending to Files
■ Use >> to append to a file:
$ date >> log.txt
◆ Appends the standard output of the program to the end of an

existing file
◆ If the file doesn’t already exist, it is created
8. Redirecting Multiple Files

■ Open files have numbers, called file descriptors
■ These can be used with redirection
■ The three standard files always have the same numbers:

Name Descriptor
Standard input 0
Standard output 1
Standard error 2

9. Redirection with File Descriptors

■ Redirection normally works with stdin and stdout
■ Specify different files by putting the file descriptor number before

the redirection symbol:
◆ To redirect the standard error to a file:
$ program 2> file
◆ To combine standard error with standard output:
$ program > file 2>&1
◆ To save both output streams:
$ program > stdout.txt 2> stderr.txt
■ The descriptors 3–9 can be connected to normal files, and are

mainly used in shell scripts
10. Running Programs with xargs

■ xargs reads pieces of text and runs another program with them as
its arguments
◆ Usually its input is a list of filenames to give to a file processing
program
■ Syntax: xargs command [initial args]
■ Use -l n to use n items each time the command is run
◆ The default is 1
■ xargs is very often used with input piped from find
■ Example: if there are too many files in a directory to delete in one

go, use xargs to delete them ten at a time:
$ find /tmp/rubbish/ | xargs -l10 rm -f

11. tee
■ The tee program makes a ‘T-junction’ in a pipeline
■ It copies data from stdin to stdout, and also to a file
■ Like > and | combined
■ For example, to save details of everyone’s logins, and save Bob’s

logins in a separate file:
$ last | tee everyone.txt | grep bob > bob.txt
PIPE PIPE REDIRECT

last tee grep bob.txt
everyone.txt
12. Exercise 1
1 Try the example on the ‘Pipes’ slide, using rev to reverse some text.
2 Try replacing the echo command with some other commands which
produce output (e.g., whoami).
3 What happens when you replace rev with cat? You might like to try
running cat with no arguments and entering some text.

13. Exercise 2
1 Run the command ls --color in a directory with a few files and
directories. Some Linux distributions have ls set up to always use
the --color option in normal circumstances, but in this case we will
give it explicitly.
2 Try running the same command, but pipe the output into another
program (e.g., cat or less). You should spot two differences in the
output. ls detects whether its output is going straight to a terminal
(to be viewed by a human directly) or into a pipe (to be read by
another program).

Linux System Administration: Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Certification Level 1 Exam 101

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Linux System Administration: Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Certification Level 1 Exam 101

Uploaded by

Linux System Administration

Linux Professional Institute (LPI) Certification Level 1

Copyright c GBdirect Ltd 2002

3 Work Effectively on the Unix Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4 Process Text Streams Using Text Processing Filters . . . . . . . . 37

5 Perform Basic File Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

6 Use Unix Streams, Pipes and Redirects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ i

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ ii

2.13 Specifying Files with Wildcards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

3 Work Effectively on the Unix Command Line . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24

4 Process Text Streams Using Text Processing Filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ iii

4.7 Sorting Lines of Text with sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

5 Perform Basic File Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ iv

6 Use Unix Streams, Pipes and Redirects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ v

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ 1

1. Unix and Linux

◆ Especially regarding system administration

2. Unix System Architecture

■ The shell and the window environment are programs

■ Programs’ only access to hardware is via the kernel

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ 2

◆ A user needs an account to use a computer

◆ Each component should perform a single task

◆ Developed by Linus Torvalds

◆ Standard tools found on (nearly) all Linux systems

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ 3

5. Using a Linux System

◆ When Linux first loads after booting the computer

■ The login prompt may be graphical or simple text

■ If text, logging in will present a shell

■ If graphical, logging in will present a desktop

◆ Some combination of mousing and keystrokes will make a

6. Linux Command Line

■ A command is typed at a shell prompt

◆ Prompt usually ends in a dollar sign ($)

◆ The shell will try to obey the command

◆ The dollar represents the prompt in this course – do not type it

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ 4

■ Quitting all programs should log you out

◆ If in a text-only single-shell environment, exiting the shell

■ After logging out, a new login prompt should be displayed

◆ Some commands require them

$ echo Hello there

■ Commands are case-sensitive

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ 5

■ Each file has a filename

◆ A label used to refer to a particular file

■ The ls command lists the names of files

10. Creating Files with cat

■ One of the simplest is with the cat command:

■ The text typed is written to a file with the specified name

■ Press Ctrl+D after a line-break to denote the end of the file

◆ The next shell prompt is displayed

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ 6

11. Displaying Files’ Contents with cat

■ One of the simplest is with the cat command:

■ Note that no greater-than sign is used

■ The text in the file is displayed immediately:

◆ Starting on the line after the command

12. Deleting Files with rm

■ Simply pass the name of the file to be deleted as an argument:

■ The file and its contents are removed

◆ There is no recycle bin

© GBdirect Ltd 2002 http://training.gbdirect.co.uk/ 7

13. Unix Command Feedback

■ Messages are displayed in the case of errors

◆ If it manages to delete the specified file, it does so silently

■ The silence can be be off-putting for beginners

■ It is standard behaviour, and doesn’t take long to get used to

14. Copying and Renaming Files with cp

■ To rename a file use the mv (‘move’) command:

◆ Similar to using cp then rm