NOTES:

just a few notes random notes before we start. There are plenty of spelling and grammar errors here.  
I don't bother to proof read.  This is more of a stream of consciousness. Someday I may decide to go 
through this and do some checking, but for now .. foo.

I've decided to concentrate on Red Hat Enterprise Linux for a few
reasons.  1) It runs on most Enterprise Linux servers and 2) I'd like this tutorial to make a good
study guide for the Red Hat Certification Exams.

You can download Redhat Enterise Linux for this tutorial, but if you don't want to pay for the
support, you can also use CentOS or Scientific Linux.  They are %100 compatable.

You should only be using the command line to do things unless a GUI is ABSOLUTLY required. For those who
asked about cygwin you can use it but eventually you will need a full blown OS.

Through the tutorial I try to instill the "spirit" of UNIX as well as just learning commands.  So,
based on that, I've linked to a few odds and ends that accomplish that, but won't teach you a damn thing
the bofh guide below is one such link.  Others links may or may not be useful.  

http://bofh.ch/ <-- systems operator guide book)

http://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/x86/putty.exe <-- install putty .. for ssh connections from Windows)

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unixintro.html <-- UNIX intro)

http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unix1.html <-- files/directories )


I rely on other tutorials as well as my own.  There is some great stuff out on the internet and I don't 
want to reinvent the wheel.  



The cat command appears to be dumb when you first start using UNIX, but you will soon see that it 
is one of the most valuable commands in your command line arsenal.

don't use the GUI version of commands if possible. When you administer hundreds/thousands of boxes,
you're going to write shell scripts to automate configuration.  You're
not going to be able to do that by using the GUI.  It’s better to learn command line first, 
rather then start off using a crutch. 

This tutorial will also attempt to teach shell scripting.  Once you learn enough UNIX commands we’ll
start incorporating them into scripts.


you can get a free shell account at http://sdf.lonestar.org/ .   It’s
not Linux, but it’s NetBSD (a different kind of UNIX).  Here are the levels of membership: http://sdf.org/?join I
do the MetaARPA because I use it a lot, but the free account should give you access to all the UNIX commands 
to get started with.  You can signup here:
http://sdf.org/?signup


 

Here are some of my webpages: http://biff.freeshell.org/ and 
http://www.biffsocko.com and  http://biffsocko.kodingen.com

 

this is a brief timeline of UNIX: http://www.netneurotic.de/mac/unix/images/UNIX.png
  It shows how some of the major versions of UNIX are spawned from
one another.  You can get a complete list here: http://www.levenez.com/unix/  but
it’s harder to read.  Just Mouse over the bar in the middle of the
page.  


 http://www.faqs.org/docs/artu/ch02s01.html < -  origins of UNIX.  It’s important to know the process in
which it was developed.  It’s kinda interesting to know that we have
UNIX because a hippy needed an OS to play a video game on.



ummm.  I think that's it for now.  I reserve the right to come back and re-edit this though


Regards
Biff

Let the games begin.- Intro to UNIX

To start, please read the two links below:

(http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unixintro.html  <-- UNIX intro)

(http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Teaching/Unix/unix1.html <-- files/directories )

Lets start off a few exercises

Intro to UNIX:

1) Make a directory in your home directory called LL  (short for learn linux)

2) Copy the file /etc/passwd to your new directory /home/<userid>/LL

3) move the file from /home/<userid>/LL/passwd to /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd

Try out a few commands:

4) cat /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd

5) less /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd

6) head /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd

7) tail /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd

8) wc  /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd     

Now lets take a look at command line switches:

9) show me the first two lines of /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd using the head command

10) show me the last three lines of /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd using the tail command

11) show me only how many lines are in the /home/<userid>/LL/test_passwd file using the wc command.