Booting the Lab Systems

1. The TS111 lab has LINUX installed on all the sytems.
2. When the system boots, a program called "Grub" runs which is a "boot manager" and determines which partition of the disk is booted. A selection screen will appear for 10 seconds.
3. On most systems, Windows is the default, so if you do nothing within 10 seconds, Windows will boot.
4. On some systems, LINUX may be the default. These will be marked in the lab! Someone else may, however, have booted them into Windows.
5. To boot LINUX, on the Grub screen, move the cursor down to the first "Ubuntu" entry and press ENTER.

Booting LINUX if the System is Running Windows

1. If you are in Windows, press START, Shutdown, Restart, and then select the first Ubuntu entry when "Grub" comes up.
2. If Windows is at the default screen, waiting for Alt-Cntl-Del for login, then press Alt-Cntl-Del and select Shutdown/Restart.

Rebooting Windows

On those systems for which LINUX is not the default, you should reboot Windows before leaving the lab.

When you are done with Linux, you may reboot back to the Grub point (from which the system will boot Windows if you do nothing) by either:

• Click on the "power button" icon at the top right of the screen and then click on "Reboot".
• On the menu bar (Panel) select System->Quit->Restart

Note: Normally, non-root users do not have priviledge to reboot. The lab systems were configured this way so that users do not have to login root just to reboot back to windows.

Using LINUX

1. When you are in a X-Session, we have provided a Desktop manager called "gnome". This manager has some of the look and feel of Windows. On the "panel" - top bar on the screen - are some standard functions. To open a terminal (console) window, press the icon which looks like a little terminal.

   In a terminal window, you can bring up the most recent command. This is done differently depending upon which "shell" we use. The "repeat" key in the shell we are using (BASH) is the up-arrow. If you go too far in the stack of commands, you can use the down arrow to come back.

2. The userid's initially available are:
   • root
   • square

Accessing Your hdrive and the Instructor tdrive

1. You can get to your hdrive (and get the courses folder with the ERODD directory) by typing:
   mnet logon student userid
   This will prompt for your password. This is your normal network password you use in Windows. You cannot print or access your H: drive unless you login.
   Your hdrive will now be:

   $HOME/hdrive

   Your t-drive will now be:

   $HOME/tdrive

2. You can unmap your drives with:
   mnet logoff
3. Note: mnet will mount the hdrive in $HOME/hdrive and the tdrive in $HOME/tdrive. For example, if you are logged on to "square", then $HOME is /home/square. Even if you login from another session (e.g. Cntl-alt-F2), these directories are still mounted!
4. When you first login to userid "square", your current directory will be $HOME (/home/square). Therefore, to make your hdrive the current directory, just type:

   cd hdrive
   

5. If you hdrive is your current directory, then to make the instructor tdrive your current directory you would type:

   cd ../tdrive
   

   The ".." means go back one level (to /home/square).

Printing

You cannot print on LINUX unless you have logged in! (see mnet discussion above).

Printing will normally be done using the command a2ps:

  a2ps filename

Console Sessions

Note: While we will normally stay within the window manager, you can use UNIX "console" sessions. When you enter LINUX, the session which comes up is in a windows manager using the X-protocol. You can get to console sessions by going to alternates by: From the Xwindows session, press alt-cntl-Fn to get to console session n (n=1-6). This provides a console session. You can switch between sessions by pressing ALT-Fn (The X-manager session is at Alt-F7).

Editing Files

Editors to edit your files. The standard UNIX editor is "vi". A tutorial on this editor is here. This editor is available on ALL UNIX systems. Actually, on our lab systems, "vi" is an enhanced "vi" called "vim". If you use "vi" on other UNIXs, you may find some features missing (e.g. the display of line/column number).

The lab systems also provide several GUI editors more like NOTEPAD. One of there is called "gedit". This is available either from the command line or from the Panel as Applications->Accessories->Text Editor.

Browser

The browser on these systems is "Firefox", an open source Netscape like browser. There is an icon on the task bar to start the browser.

Basic UNIX Commands

The following are basic UNIX command line commands which can be used in a console window or on a console session.
Note: In UNIX/LINUX, filenames are case sensitive. That is, files "File1" and "file1" are two DIFFERENT filenames!

ls

Lists all the files in the current directory.

ls -l

The -l says show full information (e.g. size, date/time updated). Like DOS "dir".

ls -lrt

The -lrt says show full information and sort in reverse time/date order so that the newest files are shown last.

cp filename1 filename2

Copy filename1 to filename2. This will overwrite an existing filename2.
Note: filename1 and filename2 can be either fully qualified names (e.g. /home/public/myff1.java) or assumed to be in the current directory.

mv filename1 filename2

Move filename1 to filename2. I.e. a rename function.

rm filename1

Remove filename1. Like DOS "erase."

pwd

Show the current directory.

cd pathname

Change current directory. Just like DOS "cd".

mkdir pathname

Make a new directory. Just like DOS "mkdir".

command | more

Command is ANY UNIX command. This pipes the output to "more" which will stop when the screen is full and wait for you to press the space bar to show the next screen.

grep string filename1

Search the file filename1 for all lines containing string. For example, "grep Text psamp.java" will show the lines in file, "psamp.java" which contain the string "Text".

lpr filename

Print filename on the default printer. In the TS111 lab, the default printer is the lab printer.

HOWEVER in our labs, the printers are configured for Windows text files, not UNIX, so using lpr to print text prints incorrectly. On our LINUX, use the command:

a2ps filename This converts the text to postscript with a nice formatting.

The problem is that Windows files have a CRLF (carriage return AND line feed) after each line. In UNIX, there is only a NL (new line - same binary code as line feed).