INTRODUCTION TO LINUX

HINDITRON INFOSYSTEMS PVT. LTD.

DEFINITION
 Operating System is a collection of programs that
coordinates the operation of computer hardware
& software.
What is Kernel ?
 A set of functions that make up the heart of an OS
 It is used to provide an application interface
between programs and physical devices.
 Services provided by the kernel
– Controls execution of processes.
– Scheduling processes fairly for
execution on the CPU.
– Allocating memory for an executing
process.
What is Shell ?
 Shell is the interface between the user and the
kernel.
 Services provided by the shell
– It interprets all the commands to the kernel
– The kernel after processing the commands
gives back to the shell.
History of Unix
MULTICS PROJECT
 It was started in 1965 on Main frame GE 645 by
the joint effort of
– AT & T Bell Labs
– General Electricals
– Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
 Multics was written in Assembly Language
 In 1969 Multics project was dropped.
 In 1969, Ken Thompson & Dennis Ritchie at Bell
Labs - AT&T redesigned the Multics and introduced
New OS – UNICS (Uniplexed Information &
computing system)
 It is written in 80 percent of C language and 20
percent assembly language.
 Later on totally rewritten in C language and named
as UNIX (1973 ).
 In 1988, AT&T shocked the UNIX
community by purchasing a percentage of
Sun Microsystems which became a threat
for other vendors.
 So, other vendors quickly formed a
consortium group called OSF and former
formed their group named UI.
History of Linux
 In 1990’s, Linus Torvalds ,a graduate student
form University of Helsinky designed a UNIX like
kernel on 386 Intel machine and gave this to OSF.

 Linux Kernel was bundled with many software's

from various distributors and it gave rise to many
flavors of LINUX.
FILE SYSTEM HIERARCHY
/
• This Directory is called as ‘root’ Directory.
• It is the top of the file system structure.
• All other Directories are mounted under it.
/root
• This is the default home directory of administrator
(i.e., root).
/home
• It contains all users home directories.
/boot
• This Directory contains the Kernel, the core of the
operating system.
• This also contains the files related to booting the
system such as the boot loader and the initial
ramdisk.
/sbin
• It contains administrative commands used by
superuser.
/bin
• This Directory contains command used by the
superuser and the normal users.
/usr
• It contains the programs and applications which are
available for users (similar to program files on
windows)
/var
• It contains variable information , such as logs and
print queues.
/dev
• This Directory contains devices nodes through
which the operating system can access hardware
and software devices on the system.
/etc
• It contains all configuration files.
/proc
• This Directory is a mount point for virtual
information about currently running system
processes.
• This Directory is empty until the proc file system is
mounted.
/tmp
• This Directory contains temporary files used by the
system
/opt
• It contains the third party applications
ex:- Corel Word Perfect, Sun Star Office.
/media
• It contains default mount points of removable
media such as cdrom, floppy disk, pendrive.
/lib
• It contains libraries need by no. of different
applications as well as linux kernel.
BASIC COMMANDS
Print Working Directory
[root@comp1 ~]# pwd

Shows list of files & directories

[root@comp1 ~]# ls <options> <arguments>

Listing of files and directories along with the attributes

[root@comp1 ~]# ls –l or
[root@comp1 ~]# ll

Listing of all files and directories including the hidden

root@comp1 ~]# ls –a

Listing of all files and directories in reverse order

[root@comp1 ~]# ls -r
Listing of files and directories along with the ‘inode’ numbers
[root@comp1 ~]# ls –il

Listing of the attributes of a particular file or directory

[root@comp1 ~]# ls -ld <directory>

Shows the list of files in Tree structure

[root@comp1 ~]# ls -R <directory>
Creation of Files
By using three methods we can create files
• cat command
• touch command
• vi editor

Displaying & Creating Text Files

[root@comp1 ~]# cat <options> <arguments>

To create a file
[root@comp1 ~]# cat > <filename>

To view the content of a file

[root@comp1 ~]# cat <filename>

To append a file
[root@comp1 ~]# cat >> <filename>

To transfer the contents of file1 & file2 to file3

[root@comp1 ~]# cat <file1> <file2> >> <file3>
To create a file with zero bytes as well as to change the time
stamp of file or directory.
[root@comp1 ~]# touch <filename>

To create multiple files

[root@comp1 ~]# touch <file1> <file2> <file3>

To create a directory
[root@comp1 ~]# mkdir <directory name>

To create multiple directories

[root@comp1 ~]# mkdir <dir1> <dir2> <dir3>

To create nested directories

[root@comp1 ~]# mkdir -p <dir1>/<dir2>/<dir3>
To change the directory
[root@comp1 ~]# cd <path of the directory>

To change directory one level back

[root@comp1 ~]# cd ..

To change directory two levels back

[root@comp1 ~]# cd ../..

To change directory to last working directory

[root@comp1 ~]# cd –

To change directory to home directory

[root@comp1 ~]# cd or
[root@comp1 ~]# cd ~
To remove a file
[root@comp1 ~]# rm <filename>
To remove empty directory
[root@comp1 ~]# rmdir <directory name>
To remove directory recursively and forcefully
[root@comp1 ~]# rm –rf <directory name>
To copy a file
[root@comp1 ~]# cp <source file path> <destination file path>
To copy a directory
[root@comp1 ~]# cp –r <source dir path> <destination dir path>
To move a file/dir to a different location
[root@comp1 ~]# mv <source path> <destination path>
To rename file/dir move at same location
[root@comp1 ~]# mv <old name> <new name>
VI Editor
Editors are used for inserting or deleting text.
• Windows : Notepad
• DOS : Edit
• Linux/Unix
– CLI based : EX , ED , VI
– GUI based : Emacs, Gedit, nedit, nano, pico

There are three modes of operations in VI Editor :

• Insert Mode
• Command Mode
• Execute Mode
How to get into Insert Mode

i - inserts the text at current cursor position

I - inserts the text at beginning of line
a - appends the text after current cursor position
A - appends the text at end of line
o - inserts a line below current cursor position
O - inserts a line above current cursor position
r - replace a single char at current cursor position
At Execute Mode
:q - quit without saving
:q! - quit forcefully without saving
:w - save
:wq - save & quit
:wq! - save & quit forcefully
:x - save & quit
Shift+ZZ - save & quit
:sh - Provides temporary shell
:set number - Setting line numbers
:se nu - Setting line numbers
:set nonumber - Removing line numbers
:se nonu - Removing line numbers
:84 - Press enter goes to line 84
Delete/Copy/Paste/Undo in command mode

dd - Deletes a line
2dd - Deletes 2 lines
yy - Copy a line
2yy - Copies 2 lines
p - After deleting or copying, by pressing ‘p’ the deleted or copied
contents will be pasted below the position of cursor.
u - Undo (can undo 1000 times)
Ctrl+r - Redo
G - Moves cursor to last line of file
5G - Moves cursor to 5th line of file
User & Group Administration
• Unix/Linux is multi user and multi tasking OS
• Redhat Linux uses User Private Group (UPG) Scheme :-
– User always get created with primary group
– One Primary Group per User
• When a user is created in Linux :--
– home directory ( /home/username)
– mail account (/var/spool/mail/username)
– unique UID & GID

Type of Users

- System Users 0 — 499

- Normal Users 500 — 60,000

User and Group AdministrationDatabase Files

• /etc/passwd
• /etc/shadow
• /etc/group
Creating a User
[root@comp1 ~]#useradd <options> <username>
Options :
-u - UID
-g - Primary group name/ GID
-o - Override
-G - Secondary group
-c - Comment
-d - Home directory
-s – Shell

Modifying a User
[root@comp1 ~]#usermod <options> <username>
Options :
-l - Change login name
-L - Lock the account
-U - Unlock the account
Deleting a User
[root@comp1 ~]#userdel <options> <username>
Options :
-r – recursively

Creating a Group
[root@comp1 ~]#groupadd <options> <groupname>
Options :
-g - GID
-o – override

Modifying a Group
[root@comp1 ~]#groupmod <options> <groupname>
Options :
-g - GID
-o - Override
-n - To change the group name
Deleting a Group
[root@comp1 ~]#groupdel <groupname>

Changing User setting

[root@comp1 ~]#chage <username>

Group setting
[root@comp1 ~]#gpasswd <options> <groupname>
Options :
-a - add a user
-d - Delete a user from group
-M - Creating multiple members
Boot Process
Hardware Boot
• BIOS Initialization
• Performs first POST
• If all H/W connectivity is correct gives a healthy beep.
• Boot Strap Find’s the device from where to boot :-
- Floppy
- CDrom
- Harddisk
Boot Loader
• Boot Loader Initialization – Grub
Kernel
• Kernel initializes the devices
• It mounts the root file system (/)
• It start first process ‘init’ process (/sbin/init)
Init

• Init reads /etc/inittab

• This file contains what programs or services should
be run at different run levels :
init 0 shutdown
init 1 single user mode
init 2 multiuser mode + only text + No support for NFS
init 3 multiuser mode + only text + Full Support for all services
init 4 (unused)
init 5 multiuser mode + text mode+ GUI + Fullsupport for all services
init 6 restart or reboot

Login Screen
To display status of all services
[root@comp1 ~]#chkconfig –list

To display status of particular service

[root@comp1 ~]#chkconfig --list network

To change services at certain Runlevel

[root@comp1 ~]#chkconfig --level 2345 <service> <on/off>

To start / stop any service temporarily

[root@comp1 ~]#service <service name> <start/stop/restart>
Troubleshooting
Recovering Root Password
• Root Password can be recovered in a
specialized troubleshooting mode (i.e. init 1)
• init 1 level provides a shell (i.e. sh) without logging in.

Procedure
• Restart the system
• In the splash screen Select “RedHat Enterprise Linux”
• Press ‘e’
• Select Kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.EL ro root=LABEL=/rhgb quiet
• Press ‘e’ to edit
• Edit Kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.9-5.EL ro root=LABEL=/rhgb quiet 1
• Press ‘Enter’
• Press ‘b’ to boot with the selected run level
• directly you will get shell prompt to assign the root password
• sh-3.00#passwd root
Assigning Grub Password
[root@comp1~]# grub-md5-crypt >> /boot/grub/grub.conf
[root@comp1~]# vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
Add line in /boot/grub/grub.conf
hidden menu
password --md5 <password>
title Red Hat ------
Recovering Grub Password
• Boot the System in Rescue Mode
# chroot /mnt/sysimage
# vi /boot/grub/grub.conf
Remove line from /boot/grub/grub.conf
hidden menu
password -- md5 <password>
title Red Hat -----
To configure printer
[root@comp1~]# system-config-printer

To configure modem
[root@comp1~]# system-config-network

To view the process

[root@comp1~]# ps –aux

To kill a specific process

[root@comp1~]# kill -9 <process id>

To view CPU usage by all process

[root@comp1~]# top
Networking
What is FQDN ?
• Identifies a host’s name within the DNS namespace hierarchy
• Host name + DNS domain name = FQDN
e.g. mail.hinditron.com

Assigning Hostname - Temporary

[root@comp1 ~]# hostname <system name>

Assigning Hostname - Permanent

[root@comp1 ~]# vi /etc/sysconfig/network

Modify below setting in /etc/sysconfig/network

NETWORKING=yes
HOSTNAME= <system name>
Assigning IP address - Temporary
[root@comp1 ~]# ifconfig eth0 <ipaddr> netmask <netmask>

Assigning IP address - Permanent

[root@comp1 ~]# netconfig
[root@comp1 ~]# service network restart

Assigning Virtual IP address

[root@comp1 ~]# netconfig --device <interface>:<n>
[root@comp1 ~]# service network restart

Graphical tool for assigning IP address

[root@comp1 ~]# neat
OR
[root@comp1 ~]# system-config-network
[root@comp1~]# ethtool
To check whether NIC is detected
[root@comp1 ~]# ethtool <interface>

Enabling Network Interface

[root@comp1 ~]# ifup <interface>

Disabling Network Interface

[root@comp1 ~]# ifdown <interface>

For IP address
[root@comp1 ~]# cd /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
[root@comp1 ~]# vi ifcfg-eth0

For virtual IP address

[root@comp1 ~]# vi ifcfg-eth0:1
For DNS
[root@comp1 ~]# vi /etc/resolv.conf