A Quick Guide to UNIX and Xedit(created on June 19, 2001) 1 Quick Guide to UNIX and Xedit on the Undergraduate SUN Computer Laboratory Department of Mathematics and Statistics Written by R. L. Broughton and J. S. Visch Version 1.1: Written June 19, 2001 • THE LAB The Departmental Computer Labs are situated in the basement of the new Mathe- matics and Computer Science building - rooms 033, 035, 036, 038, with the printers in the adjacent rooms 034 and 037. There are 20 X-terminals in each room. These are served by a Sun Enterprise 450 server. The labs themselves will be open - 7am - 11pm Monday to Friday 7am - 7pm Saturday and Sunday. Outside of normal working hours 8am - 5pm, Monday to Friday, however, a swipe Canterbury card (with permission for entry to the Mathematics and Computer Science Building) will be required for after hours access. The Mathematics and Statistics Department expects a responsible level of behaviour in its labs. The Lab is under the overall supervision of John Spain, Room 424 (end of the corridor on the fourth floor closest to the Chemistry Building) Phone Ext 7679 • USER CODES In order to use the system you will need to use your universal usercode and password. The password may be changed by using the command passwd. Note changing your password here will not change your password at other departments, and vice versa. If your are not registered as a user then see John Spain, A Quick Guide to UNIX and Xedit(created on June 19, 2001) 2 • LOGGING IN Activate the screen by touching a key or preferably the mouse. In the Mathematics lab a login window will appear. Type your usercode (login name) here followed by the return key. Then type your password followed by the return key. Welcome to remote host e450-0 Common Desktop Environment (CDE) Please enter your username OK Start Over Options Help Login Window Space Bar Return Key Keyboard Ctrl Keys Meta Key A Quick Guide to UNIX and Xedit(created on June 19, 2001) 3 After a small wait a series of icons and windows will appear on your screen. You are now ready to proceed to whatever you wish to do. Note: the Main window, the small window at the bottom of your screen should not be used as a working window so that it is always available for use should problems occur in the other windows. Main • e450-0 e450-0 e450:/users/math/underg/you123> • Main 11:19am up 17:06, 2 users, load average: 0.44, 0.34, 0.09 User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what you123 ttyp0 8:00am 4:22 2:26 -sh you123 ttyp1 8:00am 21 21 13 w e450:/users/math/underg/you123> In the main window above you will notice: 1. A black arrow - this is the mouse pointer. 2. A black square - this is the mouse cursor, if you move the mouse pointer off the window, the cursor will become white with a black border. 3. A gray band at the top of the window - this indicates that the mouse pointer is currently selecting this window. Note: to prevent damage to the screen, after a certain period of time, a screen blank operates so that if the screen goes to a state with Computer Lab name blocks plus Xs just touch the mouse to reactivate the screen. • LOGGING OUT You may quit or exit a window by typing exit or <Ctrl>D (which is the UNIX end of file marker). To logout of the system completely, go to your main window and type lo or exit. All windows will be closed and the system exited. Please quit any packages such as SAS, MATLAB, MAPLE etc and the editors before logging out. A Quick Guide to UNIX and Xedit(created on June 19, 2001) 4 • THE MOUSE The movement of the mouse on the mouse pad causes the mouse pointer on the screen to move in the same direction. The shape of the mouse pointer varies in different parts of the screen. You will see a black cross, an arrow or an I-beam. If the pointer becomes an clock, that means you have to wait while the computer does something. The window must be activated by placing the mouse cursor in that window whence the prompt block becomes solid black. There are several basic techniques to use with a mouse: - Click Left Press and release the left mouse button to select objects such as windows. - Drag Press the left mouse button and while holding the button down, move the pointer to a new location by moving the mouse on the mouse pad and seeing the corresponding movement on the computer screen, then release the mouse button. For example you may wish to select a few lines from your window with your mouse 1 starting in position (1), then by dragging the mouse down to position (2) the corresponding 2 text will be highlighted (reversing of black and white) as you move down(not before). • e450 • e450 This is the first line you wish to select This is the first line you wish to select This is the second line you wish to select This is the second line you wish to select This is the third line you wish to select This is the third line you wish to select This is the fourth line you wish to select This is the fourth line you wish to select This line you do not wish to select This line you do not wish to select - Click Middle Clicking the middle button inserts a copy of what you have selected to your current posi- tion. - Click Right Clicking the right button selects everything from the previous position of the cursor to the point where you clicked the right mouse. A Quick Guide to UNIX and Xedit(created on June 19, 2001) 5 • MENUS To obtain a menu, move the mouse pointer away from any windows(as shown in the diagram below) and click on one of the mouse buttons. Keeping the mouse button pressed, you can then move the mouse pointer along the menu items to a specific item, releasing the mouse button selects that item. e.g. A New Window may be activated by moving the mouse cursor to the background and pressing the left button; selecting the item New Window from the application menu (it will highlight) and letting the button go. When the skeleton profile appears on the screen, it may be positioned where you wish before clicking the left button to activate. Once activated a new e450 icon will appear here Main • e450-0 e450-0 Applications New Window Editor TextEditor Matlab Maple SAS Netscape(WWW) Netscape Mail • Main Webmail 11:19am up 17:06, 2 users, load average: 0.44, 0.34, 0.09 Calculator User tty login@ idle JCPU PCPU what Clipboard you123 ttyp0 8:00am 4:22 2:26 -sh you123 ttyp1 8:00am 21 21 13 w Other items appear on this menu including Editor which selects the Xedit editor and Matlab which brings up a Matlab window. The right-hand button will bring up a Window operations menu. - Menus for use within an X-window (the e450 window in this case). To view the menus within an X-window, you must also press the control key at the same time. - Moving windows to the foreground. To move a window to the foreground, place the mouse cursor in the grey band at the top of the window and click the left button. Note that the F3 function key will also do this. If you have too many windows at once on your screen, you can - quit a window by typing exit in that window. - iconize the window so you can recall it again, by clicking on the • in the small box at the top left-hand of the window. An icon will appear in the icon list, with an • and the window may be reactivated by clicking on the icon X. A Quick Guide to UNIX and Xedit(created on June 19, 2001) 6 • FILES UNIX is a directory based operating system, with a tree-like file structure with a / denoting a directory. Thus you will find yourself automatically at the level of your usercode directory on logging in. For example if you have code you123 (your universal usercode) then you will be at: /users/math/underg/you123 This directory is referred to as your home directory. Files within a directory are used to store text, pictures or specially formatted pro- grams. File and Directory Names: Filenames may contain any character aside from the /, which is reserved as the separator between files and directories in a pathname. Spaces within filenames are not advised as they are exceptionally hard to use. Although there is a limit on the filename length, for practical purposes you can assume that your filename can be as long as you like. Filenames must be unique within a directory, but can be the same as filenames from other directories. • WILDCARDS There are 3 special characters which are called wildcards, these are ∗,?, and [ ], which can be used to specify multiple filenames simultaneously. ∗ - An asterisk is replaced with any number of characters in a filename. e.g. fr∗ would match fred, frog, free.ps, etc. if those files were in that directory. ? - A question mark is replaced by any single character. e.g. ?at would match cat, rat, sat, etc. but not brat. [ ] - Square brackets can surround a choice of letters you would like to match.