CSC231 Bash Lab 1

--D. Thiebaut (talk) 17:04, 2 February 2017 (EST)

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This tutorial introduces the basic navigation commands, and will show you how to create directories (folders) and move in and out of them. I have used and adapted much of the information that is presented in several excellent tutorials:

• http://linuxcommand.org/
• http://ryanstutorials.net/linuxtutorial/

Switching to the Bash Shell

By default, your student account using the shell called tcsh. We will be using another shell that is more friendly: bash.
Open a terminal or console window and connect to aurora.smith.edu with your class account. Here we assume that your class account is of the form 231b-xx where xx are two unique letters associated with your personal account.
Run these commands at the Linux prompt:

cd 
cp  .login  .login.bak
cp  .bashrc  .bashrc.bak
cp  ~231b/.login  .login
cp  ~231b/.bashrc  .bashrc

What this does is to copy the a file from your instructors account (~231b) into your account (~231b-xx). This file is read automatically every time you login to your account and will set the shell to bash.

• logout of your account
• log back in. You should see something like this:

231b-xx@aurora.smith.edu's password: 
Welcome to Linux Mint 17 Qiana (GNU/Linux 3.13.0-24-generic x86_64)

Welcome to Linux Mint
* Documentation:  http://www.linuxmint.com
Last login: Thu Feb  2 16:59:49 2017 from 131.229.199.140
bash: setenv: command not found
231b-xx@aurora ~ $ 

Backing up your files

Just in case you mess up and erase files in your account that you'd like to keep, you will make an archive of all your files and save it in your instructor's account:

cd
tar -czvf backup.tgz *
rsubmit backup backup.tgz

That's it! Your instructor should now have a copy of all the files you may have created in your home account, and in case you delete some by mistake, they should be recoverable.