UNIX For Dummies Quick Reference

Get instant access to the UNIX commands and functions you need with this fast and friendly reference guide to all things UNIX. UNIX For Dummies Quick Reference, 4th Edition, clues you in to the most popular and essential parts of UNIX: X Windows managers, text editors, sending and receiving electronic mail, and networking. Starting with the UNIX shell and moving steadily deeper inside the UNIX environment, UNIX For Dummies Quick Reference, 4th Edition, cuts to the chase with clear, concise answers to all your UNIX questions. From the basics of entering commands, organizing files and directories, and determining which shell you're using, this valuable little reference book steers you in the right direction. More than 100 basic UNIX commands are alphabetically sorted for easy lookups, and advanced topics on X Windows managers, text editors, and online components are all just a few pages away. Why bother with the hassles of sorting through thousands of pages of text when the answers you need are all right here, tucked inside a lay-flat binding that lets you keep your book open to the page you're reading. Could using a UNIX reference be any easier?

Table of Contents:
Introduction: How to Use This Book 1 What’s in This Book 2 Conventions Used in This Book 2 The Cast of Icons 3 Write to Us! 3 Part I: Commanding UNIX Using the Shell 5 Directories 6 Environment Variables 6 Filenames 7 Help with Commands 7 Identifying Your Shell 8 Pathnames 8 Quoting Characters on the Command Line 9 Redirecting with Pipes and Filters 9 Shell Prompts 10 Special Characters and What They Do 11 Startup Files 13 Typing Commands 13 Wildcards 14 Part II: UNIX Commands 15 alias 16 at 16 awk 18 bash 18 bc 19 bg 20 cal 20 calendar 21 cancel 22 cat 22 cd 23 chgrp 24 chmod 25 chown 26 clear 26 cmp 27 compress 27 cp 28 cpio 29 crontab 31 csh 32 date 33 df 34 diff 34 diff3 36 dircmp 36 du 37 echo 38 ed 38 elm 39 emacs 39 env 39 ex 39 exit 39 fg 40 file 41 find 42 finger 44 ftp 45 grep 45 gunzip 47 gzip 48 head 49 help 49 history 50 id 51 irc 51 jobs 51 kill 52 ksh 53 ln 53 lp 55 lpq 57 lpr 57 lprm 58 lpstat 59 ls 60 lynx 62 mail 62 man 62 mesg 63 mkdir 64 more 64 mv 65 nice 67 nn 67 pack 68 passwd 68 pico 69 pine 69 pr 69 ps 71 pwd 73 rcp 73 red 73 rehash 73 rlogin 74 rm 74 rmdir 75 rn 76 rsh 76 script 76 sdiff 77 sed 77 set 78 setenv 79 sh 80 sleep 81 sort 82 spell 83 stty 84 tail 85 talk 86 tar 86 tee 88 telnet 89 time 89 tin 89 touch 90 trn 90 troff 91 tty 92 umask 92 unalias 93 uname 94 uncompress 95 uniq 95 unpack 96 uucp 97 uudecode 98 uuencode 99 vacation 100 vi 100 wall 100 wc 101 who 102 write 102 zcat 103 Part III: Using X Window Managers 105 Anatomy of a Window 106 Changing the Window Size 106 Exiting the Window Manager 107 Keyboard Shortcuts 108 Motif 108 FVWM 108 Maximizing a Window 109 Minimizing (Iconifying) a Window 109 Moving a Window 110 Opening a Window in an Obsolete but Easy Way 110 Opening Windows in a User-Friendly Way 110 Restoring a Window 111 Restoring a Window from an Icon 111 Selecting Several Things with Your Mouse 111 Switching Windows 112 The Window Menu 112 Working with the Common Desktop Environment (CDE) 114 CDE Applications 114 CDE Windows 115 The Front Panel 115 Front Panel Subpanels 116 Part IV: Using Text Editors 119 Using the ed Text Editor 120 Starting ed 120 Getting out of ed 120 ed commands 120 Using the emacs Text Editor 122 Starting emacs 122 Getting out of emacs 122 emacs commands 122 emacs commands for editing multiple files 124 Using the pico Text Editor 124 Starting pico 125 Getting out of pico 125 pico commands 125 Using the VI Text Editor 126 Starting VI 126 Getting Out of VI 127 vi Commands 127 vi Commands in Input Mode 130 Part V: Sending and Receiving Electronic Mail 131 Addressing Your Mail 132 elm 132 Sending a message 132 Reading your messages 133 Printing a message 133 Saving a message 134 Exiting the program 134 Changing your elm options 134 Getting help 135 Command line options 135 Mail 136 Sending a message 136 Reading your messages 137 Forwarding a message 137 Printing a message 138 Saving a message 138 Exiting the mail program 138 Command line options 138 Pine 139 Sending a message 139 Reading your messages 140 Replying to a message 141 Forwarding a message 141 Printing a message 141 Saving a message 142 Deleting a message 142 Adding an address to an address book 143 Retrieving an address from an address book 143 Exiting the program 143 Changing options 144 Getting help 144 Sending Mail Using Other Mail Programs 144 Part VI: Connecting to Other Computers 147 FTP 148 Connecting to a remote system 148 Connecting by using anonymous FTP 148 Quitting FTP 149 Listing the files in a directory 149 Moving to other directories 150 Retrieving files 150 Retrieving groups of files 151 Decompressing files that you have retrieved 151 Downloading retrieved files to your PC 152 Sending files to a remote system using FTP 153 Summary of FTP commands 154 IRC: Chatting with Others on the Net 154 Starting IRC 155 Finding IRC channels 155 Joining an IRC channel 156 Quitting IRC 156 Getting help with IRC commands 156 Chatting by using IRC commands 156 Summary of IRC commands 157 Having an IRC private conversation 158 rcp 158 Copying files from a remote computer 158 Copying all the files in a directory 159 rlogin and rsh 159 Connecting to a remote computer 159 Disconnecting from a remote computer 160 Running commands on a remote computer by using rsh 160 Logging in automatically by using rlogin and rsh 161 telnet 162 Connecting to a remote computer 162 Disconnecting from a remote computer 162 Part VII: Finding Resources on the Net 163 Internet Explorer 164 Lynx 164 Going directly to a page 164 Going back to a previous page 165 Searching within Web pages 165 Key summary 165 Netscape 166 Starting up 166 Going to a new page 166 Going back to a previous page 167 Finding places to go in Netscape 167 Printing a page 167 Saving a file 168 Freeing disk space 168 Quitting Netscape 168 Resource Indexes 168 Part VIII: Usenet Newsgroups 171 Netiquette: Avoiding Getting Flamed 172 Reading Usenet Newgroups with trn 172 Starting your newsreader 172 Changing the order in which newsgroups appear 174 Choosing which new newsgroups to subscribe to 174 Dealing with rot-13 articles 175 Dealing with shar files 175 Dealing with uuencoded files 175 Exiting the newsreader 176 Finding articles on specific topics 176 Finding a newsgroup 177 Getting help 177 Posting a new article 178 Reading articles 179 Replying to and following up an article 180 Sending an e-mail reply 181 Posting a news follow-up 181 Saving an article 181 Selecting newsgroups to read 182 Selecting the threads that you want to read 182 Skipping over a newsgroup 184 Skipping an uninteresting or offensive article 184 Skipping unread articles 184 Unsubscribing to a newsgroup 185 Understanding Newsgroup Names 185 Glossary: Techie Talk 187 Index 201

About the Author :
Unlike her peers in that 40-something bracket, Margaret Levine Young was exposed to computers at an early age. In high school, she got into a computer club known as the R.E.S.I.S.T.O.R.S., a group of kids who spent Saturdays in a barn fooling around with three antiquated computers. She stayed in the field through college against her better judgment and despite her brother John's presence as a graduate student in the computer science department. Margy graduated from Yale and went on to become one of the first microcomputer managers in the early 1980s at Columbia Pictures, where she rode the elevator with big stars whose names she wouldn't dream of dropping here. Since then, Margy (www.gurus.com/margy) has coauthored more than 20 computer books about the topics of the Internet, UNIX, WordPerfect, Microsoft Access, and (stab from the past) PC-File and Javelin, including The Internet For Dummies, 6th Edition, and WordPerfect 7 For Windows 95 For Dummies (all from IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.). She loves her husband, Jordan; her kids, Meg and Zac; gardening; chickens; reading; and anything to do with eating. Margy and her husband also run Great Tapes for Kids (www.greattapes.com) from their home in the middle of a cornfield near Middlebury, Vermont. John R. Levine was a member of the same computer club Margy was in -- before high school students, or even high schools, had computers. He wrote his first program in 1967 on an IBM 1130 (a computer almost as fast as your modern digital wristwatch, only more difficult to use). He became an official system administrator of a networked computer at Yale in 1975 and has been working in the computer and network biz since 1977. He got his company on to Usenet (see Part IV) early enough that it appears in a 1982 Byte magazine article in a map of Usenet, which then was so small that the map fit on half a page. He used to spend most of his time writing software, although now he mostly writes books (including UNIX For Dummies and Internet Secrets, both from IDG Books Worldwide, Inc.) because it's more fun and he can do so at home in the hamlet of Trumansburg, New York, where he holds the exalted rank of sewer commissioner and offers free samples to visitors and plays with his young daughter when he's supposed to be writing. He also does a fair amount of public speaking. (See www.iecc.com/johnl.) He holds a B.A. and a Ph.D. in computer science from Yale University, but please don't hold that against him.