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Prereqesites to this document

Simple examples to get you going with Telnet

Once you are at a shell prompt, you need a little bit of ability to get you going and doing neat stuff. Here is a mini-primer.

Understanding your prompt

Once you are connected, you are given a prompt. In the above connection example the prompt was "[davideous@w1 home]$". It is possible to glean some information about where you are from this prompt. First, "davideous" is the UNIX username I am logged in as, "w1" is the hostname of the server, and "home" is the basename of your current directory.

The phrase "the basename of your current directory" means the directory at the end of your current directory. If your current directory is "/web/d/a/davideous/home" then the basename of it is "home". More about this in the next section on navigating directories.

Navigating directories

When you login you are placed in your home directory. However, you most likely have other directories that you would like to work in. Here are the commands you will use:

  1. cd - change directory
    Enter the name of the directory relative to your current directory you would like to enter, or the absolute directory name. Leave the argument blank to move back to your home directory. Or to go back to the parent directory, use ".." which is an alias to the parent directory.

  2. pwd - print working directory
    Prints your current directory.

Here is an example telnet session that shows an example of changing directories. Also notice how the basename of the current directory in the prompt changes.

    [davideous@w1 home]$ pwd
    /web/d/a/davideous/home
    [davideous@w1 home]$ cd misc
    [davideous@w1 misc]$ pwd
    /web/d/a/davideous/home/misc
    [davideous@w1 misc]$ cd ..
    [davideous@w1 home]$ pwd
    /web/d/a/davideous/home
    [davideous@w1 home]$ cd imap-maildir
    [davideous@w1 imap-maildir]$ cd distrib
    [davideous@w1 distrib]$ pwd
    /web/d/a/davideous/home/imap-maildir/distrib
    [davideous@w1 distrib]$ cd
    [davideous@w1 home]$ pwd
    /web/d/a/davideous/home
Listing files

There are a couple commands which you can use to view the files in your current directory.

  1. ls - list files
    Lists the files in your current directory. Provide the option "-a" to show the hidden files (hidden files have names that begin with a period). Provide the option "-l" to show a long listing with file creation dates, permissions, etc.

  2. dir - alias to "ls -la"
    An alias to run ls with the "-l" and "-a" options to that it shows you all the information about all the files.

  3. tree - show a tree of all the files in this subdirectory
    A great little program that shows you a tree listing of all the files in a subdirectory.
You can also ask any one of these commands to list the files in another directory, by just providing the name of that directory on the command line.

Here are some examples: (Using a smaller font so it will fit in the screen width.)

    [davideous@w1 imap-maildir]$ ls
    distrib/ help-patch.html index-old.html index.html

    [davideous@w1 imap-maildir]$ ls -la
    total 40
    drwxr-xr-x   3 davideou web          4096 Feb 25 18:30 .
    drwxr-xr-x  33 davideou web          4096 Feb 15 20:36 ..
    drwxr-xr-x   2 davideou web          4096 Jan  6 09:01 distrib
    -rw-r--r--   1 davideou web          1343 Aug 17  1999 help-patch.html
    -rw-r--r--   1 davideou web          8797 Oct  5 12:12 index-old.html
    -rw-r--r--   1 davideou web         11730 Feb 25 18:30 index.html

    [davideous@w1 imap-maildir]$ tree
    .
    |-- distrib
    | |-- imap-4.5-3mdir1.i386.rpm
    | |-- imap-4.5-3mdir1.src.rpm
    | |-- imap-4.5-3mdir2.i386.rpm
    | `-- imap-4.5-3mdir2.src.rpm
    |-- help-patch.html
    |-- index-old.html
    `-- index.html
    1 directory, 7 files

    [davideous@w1 imap-maildir]$ ls distrib
    imap-4.5-3mdir1.i386.rpm      imap-4.5-3mdir1.src.rpm
    imap-4.5-3mdir2.i386.rpm      imap-4.5-3mdir2.src.rpm
Deleting, renaming, and editing files

"rm" is to delete files
"mv" is to move files
"pico" is a good editor to edit files

Creating, deleting, and renaming directories

"mkdir" makes a directory
"rmdir" removes a directory
"mv" renames a directory
"rm -rf" can delete a directory and all the files in it

Chaning your password

"passwd" is the command to change your password