Linux Navigation for Beginners - Part 1
This tutorial will give an overview and some basic commands on how to move
around in linux-2.4.18-3's (various linux) for the new linux users.
ls. What ls does is gives a list of the files/programs/dir's withing the
directory itself. There are many appendages from ls but some basic ones
are as follows:
ls -a - usually used as root to list hidden files as well as regular.
bash-2.05a$: ls -a
kernelcomp.tar.bz2 .xsession-errors
kp .xvpics
( the . in front of the file shows that it is a hidden file)
ls -l shows permissions of the contents of the directory. ex. -
bash-2.05a$: ls -l
-rw-r--r-- 1 er0k er0k 44 Jan 7 10:24 xorrd
-rw------- 1 root root 3135 Jan 12 12:35 Xsession
ls -s shows the size of the file in kilobytes.
bash-2.05a$: ls -s
28 funnypic.jpg 20 xor
16 game 4 xor-commented.cpp
the size is in front of the file.
moving on now to more advanced but still simple commands. Whenever you
download a file in linux, you usually have a .tar.gz, a .rpm. or even a
.tar.bz2 file extension appending from the file. The way you can normally
install a .tar.gz is tar xvzf filenamehere.tar.gz
cd untarr'ed dir
./configure or even make conf which just tests your system, make conf makes the config file
make
make install
for an rpm, it would be something more along the lines of:
rpm -Uvh filenamehere.bleh.rpm
the documentation that comes with the program should be in the contents of
the recently rpm'd program. Mainly because the use of rpm and installation
varies consistently.
man pages. Man pages, short for Manual Pages are basically just
documentation of a program, file or text manipulator of some sort. in
order to use man pages, the man page has to be there of course. so you
would type - man whateveryouwanthere and see if it has built in
documentation. If it doesnt, you can add them by googling for the proper
man page and adding them manually.
cd. Cd'ing changes the directory you are currently in. Example:
bash-2.05a$: cd /tmp
or even something more along the lines of bash-2.05a$: cd /var/spool/mail
cp. cp moves a file to another directory. Example:
bash-2.05a$: cp /home/er0k/bleh.txt /usr/local/src/stuff
which will move bleh.txt to the directory /usr/local/src/stuff
mv. mv simply renames a file. mv originalnamehere newnamehere
mkdir. mkdir creates a directory of your choice.
bash-2.05a$: mkdir er0k_stuff
the directory er0k_stuff will be made in whatever directory you are
currently in.
ps aux - is a useful command to show what is going on inside your
computer, roughly. Whatever you want to see if is running you would type
something along the lines of bash-2.05a$: ps aux filehere or even ps
aux|grep filehere for a more advanced search.
find / -name filehere -print is a good way to find files.
which. which filename here will show programs currently listed in binary
directories.
bash-2.05a$: which xmms
/usr/bin/xmms
^^^^^^ will appear for that program specifically.
This concludes part 1 of my basic Linux navigation tut. I will create
further and more detailed tutorials later on.
