UNIX

MA658 – UNIX and Network Programming

Overview of UNIX
• An operating system can be defined as the software that controls the
hardware resources of the computer and provides an environment
under which programs can run.
• This software is also called as the kernel. It resides at the core of the
environment.
• UNIX was originally developed in 1970 by a group of AT&T employees
Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Douglas McIlroy, and Joe Ossanna at
Bell Labs.
UNIX System Architecture
• The interface to the kernel is a layer
of software called the system calls.
• Libraries of common functions are
built on top of the system call
interface, but applications are free
to use both.
• The shell is a special application
that provides an interface for
running other applications.
• A shell is a command-line interpreter that reads user
input and executes commands.
• The user input to a shell is normally from the terminal
(an interactive shell) or sometimes from a file (called a
shell script).
Logging in…
• When you turn on the UNIX system the prompt will appear
like this
Change Password
• Step 1: To start, type passwd at the command prompt.
• Step 2: Enter your old password, the one you're currently
using.
• Step 3: Type in your new password.
• Step 4: You must verify the password by typing it again.
Files and Directories
• The UNIX file system is a hierarchical arrangement of
directories and files.
• Everything starts in the directory called root, whose name
is the single character /.
• A directory is a file that contains directory entries.
• The names in a directory are called filenames.
• A sequence of one or more filenames, separated by slashes
and optionally starting with a slash, forms a pathname.
Filenames and Pathnames
• The only two characters that cannot appear in a filename are
the slash character (/) and the null character.
• Characters that can be used: letters (a-z, A-Z), numbers (0-9),
period (.), dash (-), and underscore ( _ ).
• The slash separates the filenames that form a pathname
(described next) and the null character terminates a pathname.
ls command
• To list all the files in current working directory command used
is ls.
• Syntax of `ls` command
ls [option] [file/directory]
• There are different options that are commonly used with ls
command.
• -l known as a long format that displays detailed information
about files and directories.
• -a Represent all files Include hidden files and directories in the
listing.
• -t Sort files and directories by their last modification time,
displaying the most recently modified ones first.
• -r known as reverse order which is used to reverse the default
order of listing.
• -S Sort files and directories by their sizes, listing the largest
ones first.
• -R List files and directories recursively, including
subdirectories.
• -i known as inode which displays the index number (inode) of
each file and directory.
• -g known as group which displays the group ownership of files
and directories instead of the owner.
• -h Print file sizes in human-readable format (e.g., 1K, 234M,
2G).
• -d List directories themselves, rather than their contents.
• – normal file
• d : directory
• s : socket file
• l : link file
• r : read
• w : write
• x : execute
• First Column: Represents the file type and the permission given
on the file. Below is the description of all type of files.
• Second Column: Second field specifies the number of links for
that file.
• Third Column: Represents the owner of the file. This is the Unix
user who created this file.
• Fourth Column: Represents the group of the owner. Every Unix
user will have an associated group.
• Fifth Column: Represents the file size in bytes.
• Sixth Column: Represents the date and the time when this file
was created or modified for the last time.
• Seventh Column: Represents the file or the directory name.
• Two filenames are automatically created whenever a new
directory is created: . (called dot) and .. (called dot-dot).
• Dot refers to the current directory, and dot-dot refers to the
parent directory. In the root directory, dot-dot is the same as
dot.
• Every process has a working directory, sometimes called the
current working directory. (command used pwd)
• This is the directory from which all relative pathnames are
interpreted.
• A process can change its working directory with the chdir
function.
Absolute Path Vs Relative Path
• An absolute path is defined as specifying the location of a file
or directory from the root directory(/). In other words we can
say absolute path is a complete path from start of actual
filesystem from / directory.
• Relative path is defined as path related to the present working
directory(pwd). Suppose I am located in /home/user1 and I
want to change directory to /home/user1/Documents. I can
use relative path concept to change directory(cd) to
Documents.
Absolute Path
/Home/user/document/srv.Txt
/Root/data/dev.Jpg
/Var/log/messages
Relative path
$ pwd
/home/user1
$cd Documents/ (using relative path)
$pwd
/home/user1/Documents
or
$ pwd
/home/user1
$cd /home/user1/Documents/ (using absolute path)
$ pwd
/home/user1/Documents
File I/O
• Most file I/O on a UNIX system can be performed using
only five functions: open, read, write, lseek, and close.
• A file descriptor is a non-negative integer that the
kernel uses to identify the files accessed by a process.
• Whenever it opens an existing file or creates a new file,
the kernel returns a file descriptor that we use when we
want to read or write the file.
• When reading or writing a file, the file will be identified
with the file descriptor that was returned by open or
create as an argument to either read or write.
• By convention, all shells open three descriptors
whenever a new program is run: standard input,
standard output, and standard error.
• UNIX System shells associate file descriptor 0 with the
standard input of a process, file descriptor 1 with the
standard output, and file descriptor 2 with the
standard error.
Input and Output

File Descriptors
• File descriptors are normally small non-negative integers that the kernel
uses to identify the files accessed by a process. Whenever it opens an
existing file or creates a new file, the kernel returns a file descriptor that we
use when we want to read or write the file.