Description

A tutorial to learn UNIX from the ground up, Sams Teach Yourself UNIX in 24 Hours, Fifth Edition will let students experience UNIX through hands-on tutorials divided into 24 one-hour lessons. The author guides readers through the basics of maintaining and manipulating a UNIX/Linux operating system. This hands-on approach allows readers to work through the exercises and grasp common UNIX/Linux concepts.

Features

• Gives the fundamental knowledge needed to begin working with Unix-based operating system, including Oracle Solaris, Linux, and Mac OS X
• Teaches Unix through a series of 24 one-hour lessons that teach the essentials of Unix from the ground up
• Trains with straightforward instructions that walk readers through the most common Unix tasks

New to this Edition

Updated and new coverage to adapt the book so that it reflects the primary platforms on which Unix-based systems are being used today — Oracle Solaris, OS X, and Linux.

Table of Contents

HOUR 1: What Is This Unix Stuff?

What Is Unix?

A Brief History of Unix

What’s All This About Multiuser Systems?

Cracking Open the Shell

Getting Help

HOUR 2: Getting onto the System and Using the Command Line

Beginning Your Session

Seeing What’s Going On Around You

HOUR 3: Moving About the File System

What a Hierarchical File System Is All About

Directory Separator Characters

The Difference Between Relative and Absolute Filenames

HOUR 4: Listing Files and Managing Disk Usage

The ls Command

Special ls Command Flags

Permissions Strings

HOUR 5: Ownership and Permissions

Working with File Permissions

HOUR 6: Creating, Moving, Renaming, and Deleting Files and Directories

Manipulating the Unix File System

HOUR 7: Looking into Files

Looking Inside Files

Hour 8: Filters, Pipes, and Wildcards!

Maximizing the Command Line

Hour 9: Slicing and Dicing Command-Pipe Data

The awk Programming System

How to Use cut in Pipes

Inline Editing with sed and tr

Hour 10: An Introduction to the vi Editor

Editing the Unix Way

HOUR 11: Advanced vi Tricks, Tools, and Techniques

Advanced Editing with vi

Summary of vi Commands

Hour 12: An Overview of the emacs Editor

The Other Popular Editor: emacs

Hour 13: Introduction to Command Shells

The (Command) Shell Game

Hour 14: Advanced Shell Interaction

Which Shell Is Which?

HOUR 15: Job Control

Wrestling with Your Jobs

HOUR 16: Shell Programming Overview

Building Your Own Commands

Hour 17: Advanced Shell Programming

Searching a Database of Filenames with mylocate

HOUR 18: Printing in the Unix Environment

Making a Printed Copy

HOUR 19: Archives and Backups

The tar Tape Archive Utility

The zip Archive Utility

Shrinking Your Files with compress

Exploring the Unix Tape Command: cpio

Personal Backup Solutions

Working with Linux Package Managers

HOUR 20: Using Email to Communicate

Interacting with the World

HOUR 21: Connecting to Remote Systems Using SSH and SFTP

Stepping Beyond Your Own System

HOUR 22: Searching for Information and Files

Finding What’s Where

HOUR 23: Perl Programming in Unix

Flexible and Powerful: Perl

Hour 24: GNOME and the GUI Environment

Tweaking Your Inner GNOME

Working with GNOME Applications

Appendix A: Common Unix Questions and Answers

How do I use find|xargs with filenames that contain spaces?

How do I find large files on my system?

How do I run a program on a schedule?

How do I fix file permission problems?

How do I list files that don’t match a given pattern?

How do I view lines X–Y in a text file?

How do I add a new directory to my PATH?

How do I recover deleted files?

How can I set my shell to protect me from accidental deletions?

What do the shell errors arg list too long and broken pipe mean?

Why use ssh instead of telnet? Or sftp instead of ftp?

 

Author

Dave Taylor is president of Intuitive Systems, LLC, a consulting firm focused on online communications and marketing strategies. Founder of four Internet startups, he has been involved with Unix and the Internet since 1980, having created the popular Elm Mail System and Embot mail autoresponder. A prolific author, he has been published more than 1,000 times, and his most recent books include the best-selling Wicked Cool Shell Scripts and Learning Unix for Mac OS X.

 

A popular columnist for Linux Journal, he also writes a tech Q&A column for the Boulder Colorado Daily Camera newspaper. Previously, he was a research scientist at HP Palo Alto Laboratories. He has contributed software to the 4.4 release of Berkeley Unix (BSD), and his programs are found in all versions of Linux and other popular Unix variants.

 

Dave has a bachelor’s degree in computer science (University of California at San Diego), a master’s degree in educational computing (Purdue University), and an MBA (University of Baltimore), and he is a top-rated public speaker who frequently offers workshops on online marketing, blogging, and various technical topics. His official home page on the Web is http://www.DaveTaylorOnline.com, and his email address is d1taylor@gmail.com.

 

Dave also maintains three weblogs online, Ask Dave Taylor (at www.askdavetaylor.com), where he fields questions from readers on a wide variety of topics; GoFatherhood (at www.GoFatherhood.com), where he talks about the challenges and joys of parenting; and Dave On Film (www.DaveOnFilm.com), where he shares his reviews of the latest movies. You’re invited to get involved at all three!