USEFUL BASIC UNIX KNOWLEDGE

find Find files

grep Search a file for a pattern

sort Sort or merge files

bash GNU Bourne-Again SHell.

bash reference manual in html (table of contents) and PostScript (landscape).

Process control

-a     Select all processes except process group leaders and processes not associated with a terminal.
-e    Select all processes.
-l    Show columns flags, state, uid, pid, ppid, cpu, intpri, nice, addr, sz, wchan, tty, time, and comm, in that order.
-f    Show columns user, pid, ppid, cpu, stime, tty, time, and args, in that order.

Look for matlab processes (for example) only:
ps -alef | grep matlab
 

The kill command sends a signal to each process specified by a pid process identifier.  The default signal is SIGTERM, which normally terminates processes that do not trap or ignore the signal.

Options:

-9    Kill hard (can not be ignored by the process).
 

Kill process 6135 (given by ps for example):
kill 6135
 

Disk stuff

Options:
-l  List in long format, giving mode, number of links, owner, group, size in bytes, and time of last modification for each file
-a List all entries; usually entries whose names begin with a period (.) are not listed.

Options:
-R Copy recursive (needed if you want to copy directories).

du  Summarize disk usage.

List all files in current directory and sort in ascending order:
du -s * | sort -n

df -tk .

Viewing text files

less Less is a program similar to more, but which allows backward movement in the file as well as forward movement.

Viewing manual pages

info For reading Info documents about unix commands. Uses a simple menu driven text interface. Example: info emacs

FTP

gftp  X Windows frontend to ftp.
 

Math

xmaple

Text Pocessing

xemacs

latex/tex Structured text formatting and typesetting.

Graphic Tools

gimp  The General Image Manipulation Program (like Photoshop).

xfig  Facility for Interactive Generation of figures.

Printing

Options:
-Pprinter

Note 1: If you want to cancel a printer job goto: http://signserv.signal.uu.se

Note 2: To set the default printer add export PRINTER=floor2@signserv to your .bashrc file (type ls -a in your home dir if you can't find it).

Note 3: If you have a PS-file and want higher quality when printing on the color printer color2, try adding the following lines at the beginning (in the %% part) of the ps-file :

%%BeginFeature: *MediaType Glossy

<</InputAttributes <<
    currentpagedevice /InputAttributes
get
    dup 1 known exch 0 get dup length
dict copy
    dup /MediaType (Glossy) put
    exch {1 exch dup}if 0 exch >>
  /MediaType (Glossy)
>>setpagedevice
<</TraySwitch false>> setpagedevice
%%EndFeature

%%BeginFeature: *OutputMode HighQuality

<</PostRenderingEnhance true
/PostRenderingEnhanceDetails
<</PrintQuality 3 /Type 11>>
>> setpagedevice
%%EndFeature

---

PostScript

Viewing PostScript files


gv -fg black -bg white file.ps &
 Options :

-fg Foreground color.
-bg Background color.
 

Text to PostScript Conversion

a2ps file.txt > file.ps
Options:

-1 single page mode.
-p Print files in portrait mode (horizontal pages).

Example: convert all m-files in a directory to PostScript and put them in a single ps-file.

a2ps -1 -p *.m > m_files.ps
 

Put n-pages on one page

mpage  Print multiple pages (text or PostScript) per sheet on a PostScript printer or to a file.

 psnup -2 a_file.ps a_file2.ps
Options:

-n n-pages (PostScript) on each page. Hint: Good if you wan't put several PostScript slides (overheads) on one page to hand out to students.