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At login time, you'll see a prompt that will look something like this:
Red Hat Linux release 5.2 (Apollo)
Kernel 2.0.35
dougal login:
Enter your user name and press the Enter key.Next you will be prompted for your password:
password:Enter your password. The characters you enter won't be echoed to the screen, so type carefully. If you mistype your password, you'll see the message
Login incorrect
Type your password again. Once you have correctly entered your user name and password, you will be logged in to the system.
The environment you will be using is KDE (K Desktop Environment). For further information on KDE check the KDE web site or our introduction to the KDE environment.
Choose application starter (this will be a white letter K on your toolbar) followed by Utilities then Terminal
This will open kvt which is a command line window. You will be presented with the command prompt which will look something like:
[machine_name]user:
where machine_name is the name of the machine you are on and user is your user name.
To start you off here's some basic Linux information and commands that you'll probably find quite useful, if you want to know more about any of the Linux commands you can access the online Unix manual by typing man followed by the command you'd like more information on. For example, if you required more information about the ls command you would type man ls N.B.Linux filenames and commands are case sensitiveTo change into another directory you use the cd command. i.e. cd directory_name. To move back up to the parent directory type cd ... No matter where you are in the directory structure, if you type cd just on its own you will be returned to your home directory.
To copy a file to another directory the cp command is used. i.e. cp filename directory_name. This will keep your old file intact and put a copy of it in your chosen directory. Alternatively, to move the file to another directory rather than copying it, use the mv command i.e. mv filename directory_name. Using this command will not leave the original file intact but will instead move it to your chosen directory. The mv command can be used to rename a file i.e. to rename the file old_file to new_file type mv old_file new_file.
Note: cp and mv will overwrite the destination file (if it already exists) without asking you.
To create a directory the mkdir command is used. For instance, to create a directory called MyDir you would type mkdir MyDir. Type ls and you will see the directory you have just created, then use cd MyDir to move into your new directory.
To remove a file use the rm command i.e. rm filename and to remove a directory use rmdir directory_name. This command will delete the directory only if the directory is empty.
To move about a file while using more, use the space bar to move forward a page, type 'b' to display the previous page and type 'q' to exit more.
To find an occurence(s) of a particular string in a file use the grep command. For instance if you wished to display all the lines in a file that contain the string my_string type grep my_string filename.
chmod g+r filename
or to remove write permission from everyone:chmod a-w filename
where the minus sign removes a permission from a set of users and the plus sign adds a permission.lpr myfile
or the a2ps command, i.e:
a2ps myfile