Instructions for using the SGI unix machines
The unix machines use the same directory structure as the windows/dos
machines. When you log in to an SGI machine you will see what is called the
"desktop". It looks a little bit like the Windows 95 desktop. But
unlike windows95, where you rarely use the DOS command prompt, in unix
the command prompt ( or "shell") is used extensively... mostly because
its a very powerful and fast way to work on unix. So the first thing
you want to do is, click on the "Desktop" button in the "Toolchest"
and choose the "Unix Shell" item. The Toolchest is located on the upper
left hand corner of the desktop. This will open a blue colored window
with a unix command prompt in it. The prompt looks like this
studentx@Machine_name [ some number]
Congratulations. You are in the Unix shell now.
Once you are in the shell, type some commands to get the feel of
the environment. eg.
To see which directory you are currently in type pwd on the prompt.
( And press the Enter key. From now on I will not mention the Enter key.)
To see the files and subdirectories in the current directory type ls
this shows you files and subdirectories in the current directory. To see
more details; type ls -l. The -l part is an option passed on to the
ls command. ( you can think of it as long view option) This is the
typical way of passing options to unix commands.
To create a new subdirectory under the current directory, type
mkdir <new-directory-name>; eg. If I wanted to create a subdirectory
named chetan under the current subdirectoy, I would type
mkdir chetan
To change to a subdirectory, type cd <subdirectory-name>
This should be familiar from your DOS experience (if any). To go back to
the original directory type cd ..
To see the contents of any text file type more <file_name>
You can edit a text file by using the jot editor. This is similar to
notepad or wordpad on windows. To start editing a text file
type jot <file_name>. ( You don't really need to edit
any files for this lab.. this is just for information purposes)
To print a file, you need to use the lpr command. You will be
printing out your output file from today's lab for the discussion
in the class tommorow. To print the output file, make sure you are
in the appropriate directory and type lpr output. Then follow
the instructions on the screen. You will be given a choice of printers
to print on. You should use either datap (#6) or cem_337_hp5PS (#3)
printers.
Note: The appropriate directory is the directory in which your job
was run... this should be the subdirectory named the same as your
job name. Make frequent use of the ls and pwd commands
to make sure where exactly in the directory hierarchy you currently are. Since
more than one person will be using the same account, you have
to be extra careful not to print out the wrong file.