System Commands

Online Degree Programme

B. Sc in Programming and Data Science
Diploma Level
Prof. Gandham Phanikumar
Department of Materials Engineering
Indian Institute of Technology- Madras

Lecture 4
Simple Commands in Linux - 2

(Refer Slide Time: 00:18)

Welcome to the second session on simple commands in Linux. So, here we explore some
more commands in the Linux operating system and it is hoped that at the end of the
session you will be more comfortable with the command line environment and also
looking around in the file system and knowing about the machine a little more than
earlier. As you know we have been introduced to the forward slash which is the character
used to separate the directories within the file system hierarchy.

And it is also the name of the root file system the starting point of the file system in the
Linux environment. We will see that we can use the forward slash multiple times and it
is as good as and if we try to access the parent folder while in the root folder we would
actually stay in the root folder which actually means that the root folder is its own
parent.
(Video Start: 01:10)
So, as he said multiple users of the forward slash is as good as a single usage. So, I want
to visit the user bin. So, I will type multiple times and you would see that I am in the
same directory as slash user slash bin I. Now go to the root folder and try to access the
parent folder I see that I am in the root folder still and you can do it multiple times and it
has implies that the root folder is its own parent.
(Refer Slide Time: 01:41)

The ls command has both short and long forms of the options and when you give a
directory name as an argument the way it is interpreted is something that we have seen in
a moments. And you can actually recursively list the files and directories within a
particular folder using the -r option of ls and the sequence of options to be given in the
command line of ls command is also something that is very flexible and we can look at it
in the demo.

Let us explore the home directory a little further. So, I am not in the home directory and
when we give the -l option to the ls command by default it is showing you all the files
and directories within the current directory. Now if I were to give a folder name let us
say level 1 then it would show what are the files and directories within the directory
level 1. So, it would go below the level 1 and then show you what is there inside.

Now I want to only look at the permission string and other details in the long listing
format of the level 1 directory but not what is inside that. So, for that what we need to do
is give additional option d. So, that it would show you a string giving you the long
format a further level 1 folder as it is also shown along with other files when we did it
using the command ls -l.

So, you see that this -d option is basically triggering that you should not traverse inside
the directory and show the listing. We could also look at multiple options in one go. So,
-ldi level 1 and you will see that we are seeing the inode number and we are also seeing
the long listing format and also further directory which is level 1. Now we may give
these options in any order.

So, let me clear the screen ls -l level 1 and then -di and then I would change the sequence
-t level 1 -li ls -i level 1 -ld l level 1 -l d I or idl. So, you can see that I am giving the
options in very many ways but the output is identical it just means that the ls command
really does not bother about the sequence of the options it would take all the three
options that have been given to it and then produce the output which is basically the long
listing for the folder level 1 along with the inode number to be displayed on the screen.

Now this flexibility in terms of giving the option either before or after the argument is
not available with every command because sometimes some of the options require the
argument to immediately follow them in which case the sequence of how you provide
them on the command line would be quite important. So, generally it is a good idea to
follow the sequence in this following manner.

Where the options are in the middle and collected together as far as possible and then the
arguments are following after that okay. So, this is a very standard way of writing a
command. If you see the manual page for the ls command you would notice that there
are some options which have a long format also that is a long option also is available and
they are basically equivalent and some of them do not have that.

For example –l it does not have a long form whereas if you look at the -i it has a long
farm -inode and then if you look at it, it has a long form called directory. So, which
means that I can actually type in this manner -id l and then level 1 I could also type in
this manner -l --directory --inode level 1. So, you could see that the output is same
except that in this form if you write the intention of the command is very clear because
the long form of the option is a little more human readable.
However it is only for those who wish to type a lot but it is a good idea to also learn the
short form because the beauty of the command line environment is also to be able to
write a very short command. So, that to do a lot of work.
(Refer Slide Time: 06:28)

So, there are some commands available which help you know the content of a text file a
little more. So, we have already seen the less command and. Now we would see the wc
command the head command the tail command the cat command and the more command
all of these let you inspect the contents of a text file. We will take the example of slash it
is his slash profile to use these commands.

So, we go to the slash etc folder which contains the configurations and there is one
configuration which will be very important for anyone who uses a shell and that is called
the etc profile. So, we will understand what is in that profile later as we learn about the
shell scripts etcetera for now let us look at the content ls -l profile is there any file like
that and you see that yes there is a file like that.

Now what are the contents of it? So, earlier we learned about the less command. So, if
you type a less profile and you will see the contents of it and when the contents are
scrolled at the end you can actually see that available as bracket end which means that
the contents are over and you may. Now press q to come out of it. So, this is a short file
fitting in one screen itself.
Now there are also other ways of looking at the content. So, cat is one such command.
So, it is to cat it or concatenate the text onto the screen. So, if you type cat profile it
would just dump the contents of the file onto the screen and then exit. So, there is no
more prompting that is required for you to come out by pressing a queue or anything like
that. The disadvantage of cat is that you cannot actually move back and forth to look at
the content page by page and you cannot also come out halfway through when the text is
being displayed on the screen whereas in the case of ls you have such features.

So, sometimes if the file is very long cat is not the best way to look at the contents
because the file would keep scrolling on the screen and depending upon how many lines
are stored by your terminal emulator you may not actually be able to see the initial
content by the time it finishes displaying the whole file on the screen. Now there are
some more such commands available.

So, let me clear the screen now. More is also one command available. So, more is going
to behave similar to less it would also allow you to look at the contents of a file page by
page if there are multiple pages. Now you may also look at it just the first few lines or
the last few lines. So, there is a command called head and if you type head profile you
will see the first ten lines.

So, let us look at the man page of health and it shows you here that it actually prints the
first ten lines of the file but if you are interested in less number of lines you could also
do that using -n and then the number of lines. So, let us do that I would say type -n and
then just the five lines of the file called profile and you see that exactly five lines have
been displayed.

There is another command called tail okay as the name indicates you can view the last
few lines of the text file tail profile so you can see that the last ten lines are there let us
look at the man page for tail and it tells you that it prints the last ten lines of the file to
the screen. So, just like a head command the tail command also supports reducing or
increasing the number of lines that are to be displayed. So, here I am trying to show the
last five lens of the file profile and here are the last five lines.
As you can see there are multiple ways to inspect the contents of any text file within the
next environment before you open the file it may be a good idea to inspect how many
lines are there? How big is a file? So, there is a command for that called wc. Look at the
main page of wc it tells you that it will show you how many new lines are there which
means how many lines are there and how many words are there and how many bites are
there in each of the text files that we are giving.

So, let us go ahead and plan it on the file profile. So, wc file I said that there are 27 lines
in that particular file and there are 97 words and then 581 bites it is occupying on the
disk. So, if you look at the content in the long listing it would show you that five
hundred and eighty one is the size of the file called etc profile. Now sometimes we are
usually interested only the number of lines for the purpose of trimming some of them
displaying a specific line etcetera.

So, for that we may use option -l okay. So, it just gives you the number of lines. Now we
may be interested in knowing where are these commands and where are they located
etcetera. So, there is a command called which okay. So, we say which less and it will tell
you the location of that particular command it is sitting in user bin. So, we may want to
know what is this which itself.

So, man which and it tells you that you can actually locate the okay. So, there is another
command called whatis and using that you will have a very brief description of the
command okay. So, man page is showing you a complete manual page but what is would
show you just the first line of the man page where the brief description of that particular
command is available.

Now you will see that there is also another command called more and you will see that
this command is also in user bin. So, let us see these two how big they are ls -l and then I
give the part to know more about them okay and ls -l user bin. Now you could see that
the command called more actually occupies less space it is a smaller command and the
command called less is actually a bigger executable you can see that it occupies 180
kilobytes. The joke about this in Linux is that less is more.
(Refer Slide Time: 13:00)
We have seen that the manual pages which come bundled along with Linux help us in
learning more about a command and often we may want to discover more commands for
a specific purpose. So, you could search for them not necessarily going to the internet
but within the Linux environment itself at the batch prompt by using the apropos
command.

So, what it would do is for a keyword it would show you all the commands which would
have that keyword in description. And you could also actually browse through various
sections and various commands in those sections using a system called info. And once
you find out the name of any command you can learn more about it obviously from the
man pages but also to know where is it located and what type of a command is it a script
or is it an alias or is it a binary file sitting in one of the binary directories like user b in
etcetera.

So, we can explore the commands all by ourselves without having to go to the internet
using these set of features that are available with the Linux operating system. Let us have
a demonstration of how to discover new commands by using the features that we have
just now mentioned. So, apropos and you can give a keyword which would be searched
for. So, let us give a keyword like who.

So, I want to know who are logged onto the system etcetera okay. So, when you type
apropos who it will give you a set of commands which will help you to know who are
logged on and one of them is the who itself and of course there is another command
called who am I which we have used in one of the earlier sessions to print the name of
the user who is locked on okay.

Now obviously to know more about it you can type a man who and learn more about it
from the manual pages and what is this command apropos? you could actually ask for it
by typing which apropos and you would see that it is sitting in user bin apropos. There is
another command called whatis and let us say who. So, if there is a command called who
I want a brief description of whatis that command and what is actually do that okay .

So, you could say whatis ls, whatis ps whatis wc whatis less what is more. So, you could
actually ask what are those command and what is would give you a very brief description
of that command. Now you want to see where is this command located namely the
whatis command. So, which whatis would tell you that it is located in user bin. So, let us
see whether these are both same or not.

So, if you type ls -l user bin apropos it appears that user bin apropos is actually a
symbolic link to whatis command. So, it means that actually when you type whatis or
apropos is the same executable which is running however the output is different. For
example if I type whatis who and apropos who then the output is different. So, how is
this possible? The reason is that in Linux every executable would know in what name it
has been invoked.

And depending on the name that it is invoked it could actually have different behavio ur
okay. So, you could actually have these features tested out as part of your own basket s
once you start learning that as part of this course. Now apropos is also having the same
output as man -k and you will see that the identical output is coming. So, searching for
keyword using the manual pages is the same as what apropos is doing.

Now there are also some more features such as available. For example you can type for
help and what actually help does is show you certain keywords that are actually reserv ed
for the shell which you are running which shell are we running? So, we are running back
shell okay you can see here you are running batch shell and the help command shows
you but all the special words that are used by the batch environment.
I will show you the info also feature you could see that you could go to any a section and
you can browse through the commands and you can put the cars on any of the commands
for example chmode I will go there and then press enter and you would see the
information about the chmode that is shown here. And we can actually go back by using
the left angle bracket which is same as shift plus comma okay you come to the main
window.

And you could then go to some other command and read about that and then again come
back to the man. So, you can actually almost like a browser text based browser you can
actually browse through the commands that are available in the info system that came
along with the Linux operator. Now sometimes you may want to know what type of a
community. So, type is a command to tell you what type of a command.

So, let us say type type. So, it says it is a shell bulletin. What it means is that the
command type is actually being offered to you from the shell and not from the operating
system okay. So, type ls. Now it says that ls is alias to type command. So, which means
that it is actually coming from the command ls after having been alias with certain
option and which ls will tell you that it is actually coming from the operating system
because there is executable available can we check about that.

You can see that it is an executable and it is sitting in the user bin directory we may even
find more about it by using the file command and you will see that it is an ELF 64 bit
executable for X86 architecture and so on and occupying about 142 kilo bites and
therefore ls is actually an executable and therefore offered from the operating system
whereas type is actually coming from the shell.

So, similarly help is also a shell bulletin. So, sometimes when you are running a
command it is a good idea to know is it being offered by the shell or by the operating
system or is it an alias. So, that brings the context to aliases? What are aliases? Aliases
are nothing but nicknames that are given to certain commands sometimes you may want
it for convenience.

For example you may want to very frequently look at the long listing of your directory
ok and you may want to give that as an alias. So, I may say alias and let us save long
listing is equal to ls -l. Now you see that l l is a new command that you have created and
if you type l l you actually get the long listing of the current directory. Now you can ask
what is this l l? And it tells you that l l is alias asked to ls -l.

So, you understand it is not a command coming from the operating system is alias
coming from what you have configured just a while back. Now you do not want that you
can remove alias ll. You may want to find out what are alias that have been configured
for you in the batch and you logged on and just type alias and then you would see as list
of alias that are there.

Some of these are actually created by the user and some of them may be created by the
administrator on behalf of the user by putting them in etc profile or some such a script
file which is executed whenever the batch environment starts. We will learn about that
also a little later okay. Now you can always remove some of these aliases. So, I want to
remove let us say this alias.

So, I could just say un alias l okay. Now I will again type alias and you could see that
that particular entry has been missing. Now what happens is that if I type just l obviously
this must have come in but earlier if you were typed then it would actually give you the
output which is corresponding to ls -C F as options.
(Refer Slide Time: 21:38)

So, by now you are familiar with the concept of arguments and options. So, options are
basically enhanced features of the command that we are giving and arguments are
specific names of files or directories that we are giving on the command line. So, that the
command would act on those respect files are territories as requirement needs . Now
when we are writing a command we could actually have multiple arguments on the
command line and the way those arguments are interpreted depends upon the command
itself.

So, we should definitely read the man page of every command that we are going to use
frequently to understand how this interpretation is taking place. So, if you look at the
commands like copying using cp or moving a file using mv. Then if you give two
arguments what happens is something that we have already seen and let us see how this
is actually changing when the second argument is directory or if it is a last argument
among many many arguments that are given on the command line.

And sometimes the recursion is sometimes assumed for some command line and
sometimes you have to explicitly state it. So, let us look at that difference also in a
moment. So, we are. Now in our home directory and we will see how the number of
arguments can be specified. So, I will take the example of touch command to create
some files. Let me just see that there are no files in my home directory. So, I will create
some empty files for this practice.

So, I would say touch and let us say file1. Now if you give multiple files all of them will
be created. So, this is the idea of a multiple arguments okay. So, if I give like this it
means that all the three files will be created in one go and the time stamp will also be
identical okay. So, we have seen that these three files have been created. Now to
illustrate the way the directory will be interpreted as one of the arguments in the copy
file we will create an empty directory mkdir my director okay.

So, then I would say copy file1 to my directory and what happens is that the file1 has
been copied over to my directory. So, if you put ls you would see that the file1 is
actually there in the home directory but if you go to the directory my dir and there is a
file called file1 there also which means you have made a copy of that okay. Now let us
say I type copy file1 to file2.
Now what happens is that if the second argument is a file then you are trying to override
that file by this copy command and naturally it would ask you to confirm if you have
given with the -i option and let us say I do not want to do that I said no and I have given
earlier for cp which is -i and if you look at the man page of cp -i would correspond to
interactive which means that it should prompt whenever there is an over writing.

So, it is a good idea to have that alias kept. Now let me go to mydir and remove this file
and come out and then I can. Now remove the directory also. So, our mydir will remove
an empty directory. Now let me go back and create it again and see if I can do it without
having to go and remove the files before I remove the directory. So, I create the directory
again. Now I go to that directory and I create some file there well you see that there is a
file that is available though it is a empty file but it is still a file that is there inside and I
want to remove this directory.

And now you see that it is not empty and therefore you cannot remove it automatically .
So, you may want to force the removal and you could actually give an option called -.
So, rm -r mydir and if then go ahead and descend into the director and remove whatever
is there in that. So, it would ask each time because I have asked for that the alias -i
option I have given in the allies. So, you can see what is alias I have r -i.

So, because I have set the interactive option already it would ask me if I do not have that
alias it would not ask me let us test it out already okay. So, I will alias rm then I will
again see what is alias for arm there is no such alias. Now which rm it says rm is a
command. So, you now see that this rm command is quite dangerous because it would
not ask you while removing the directory okay.

So, let me just try that out make dir mydir go to mydir and touch a file okay then come
back to the home directory rm -r mydir and you see that it actually deleted the directory
without even asking you. So, which means that it goes by the philosophy of Linux of no
nonsense and you intended to remove the directory and that is what has been done. So, it
is a good idea for novice users to use the aliases with the –i so, that unintentionally you
will not remove and the prompting actually makes you think once more before you say
yes.
Now some options assume recursion and some options do not assume recursion okay. So,
here I will just show you we make a directory and we go into the directory and create let
us say two files in them come back to the home directory and I want to look at the
contents of mydir. So, you can see that there are two files in them. Now I want to rename
the mydir I would actually just use a move command.

But let us I want to copy to do some other name. So, what would happen? Copy mydir
and I went to copy to another directory the second argument is actually a directory that
does not exist and we would like to make a copy and that does not seem to help because
it is not a directory that is existing right now. So, what you could do is copy -r mydir to
mydir. So, if you give the -r option it would actually work because it now has created the
second directory let us go and see that.

So, it has the files that we have created. So, which means that for the copy command the
recursion is not assumed while copying it is asking whether you want it to be recursive
or not. Now mv command does not ask for that you will see that let us say I want to
move the mydir2 mydir3 and you see that it just renamed it and therefore there is no
recursion that is being asked for.

So, what it in place is that some commands assume recursion some commands do not
assume recursive and one must be aware of that while playing around with those
commands.
(Refer Slide Time: 29:04)
A little bit of discussion about the links is worthwhile. So, we have seen that both hand
link and symbolic links are possible and we can create them for a given file and looking
at the inode numbers we can actually determine whether they are hard links or symbolic
links and also from the long listing of the file system also you could actually see whether
their hard links are symbolic links okay.

Now let us look at the hard link and soft link concept. So, we have got the home
directory here. So, let us create an empty file okay and you would see that the empty file
is here. Now we would create a symbolic link to this file. So, that is done using the
command ln. So, we would look at the man page for ln. So, ln is making the links
symbolic link is done by using the -s option here it is -s option okay.

So, symbolic link and the source for which we are making the link and the destination
which is the link itself, so, ln –s source destination that is how the format looks like and
now when we look at the long listing you would see that file2 is a symbolic link to file1.
And let us look at the inode numbers you will see that file2 has an inode number which
is different from the file1 which means that there are separate entries.

The file2 is a separate entry but it is just a shortcut to the file1 okay. Now let us go ahead
and create a hard link also to file1. So, the hard links are created by with the link
command without the -s option and now look at the inode numbers in the long listing and
you will see that the file1 and the file3 have the same inode number which means that
these two are basically the same file and you would also notice they are a number of hard
links here it says two.

So, which means that these files are having 2 hard links in the file system whereas a link
file2 has only one hard link which is the symbolic link itself so, this is the difference and
you can actually note from this number here how many hard links and from there we can
actually guess that there are multiple locations for the particular file.
(Refer Slide Time: 31:44)
Now a brief note about the file sizes. So, we could actually get the file size from the long
listing of the directory. We could also ask for the file size to be specified in the very first
column using the -s option of the ls command there are also some more commands
available to know more about the size occupied by the file on the disk using the stat
command as well as by the du command and there is a role that the block size will play
to understand that we will actually do both of the demo.

So, let us go and look at these sizes from one of the system folders. So, we will go to the
user bin and type a ls there are amply number of files. So, we can inspect the sizes of
these files here. So, there is a file called z new. So, let us look at the size of that. So, stat
znew and you would see that it is telling you about the size and the size it says 4553
bites and how many blocks it is occupying and so on.

So, that new is occupying 4553 bites and it is actually occupying sixteen blocks and you
have the time stamps available here which will tell you when was it accessed when was
it modified and so on. Now look at the same information using the du command okay
and it says that together 8 it is occupying about 8 kilobytes. So, we can actually use the -
h command and it will tell you that you know in a human readable form it is about 8
kilobytes.

Now why is it 8 kilobytes as for the du output is concerned but the ls is showing you
4553? The reason is that the block size is 4 kilobytes and the size is just above 4
kilobytes. So, it actually goes on to the 8 kilobytes. It means that the files that are
actually smaller than the block size would actually take up the whole block. So, you can
have a block or more blocks but not a part of the block.

Now let us look at the zmore command which seems to be just less than one block okay
and you understand that it would actually take the whole block okay and here you see.
So, you could see that zmore a command which is occupying 4 kilograms and it would
actually have the size which is actually less than one block only 1842 bytes but it is
actually occupy 4 kilobytes because that is the size of the block.
(Refer Slide Time: 34:33)

Now there are some directories which you would see in the root folder which are
actually not sitting on the disk they are only in the memory and they are very special file
systems. We should not be messing around with those territories but we can actually
view a very important system information from those directories in a read only manner
and let us explore those two directors now.

So, we will go back to the root folder and see that these folders are available here yo u
can see here this sys and then proc okay. So, what are these folders? These folders are
actually not sitting on your hard disk proc and sys they are actually in the memory and
these are all basically data structures available for the users to know more about their
system and the proc system the slash proc file system is an older system from kernel 2.6
onwards the slash system has been used.
However even now the information about the various processes that are running is still
stored in these slash proc directly itself. We can go in and look at that without much
problem. Let us go there cd slash proc and you can see that it has many files which are
actually zero size and that would be a little bit misleading the reason is that some of
them actually have content that we can read but the size will be zero the reason is that it
is only a representation for us to explore but actually they are not real files which are
sitting on the hard disk.

So, let us look at some of the contents. So, there is a file called CPU info. So, which is
actually occupying zero but it says but let us look at its content less CPU info and you
see that there is some information that is coming out onto the screen and it seems to be
information about the CPU okay. And we could also do cat CPU info and you would see
that several lines have come and you can scroll with your mouse and read some of it .

So, it appears that it is giving you information about your CPU and when you type ls -l
you would see this file is actually showing as if it is occupying zero bytes. So, which
means that this is not real it is only in the memory and as a place holder for us to know
about the system and you can actually now know more about your system by reading
some other files also.

So, if you type cat version within the slash book directory you would see the information
which is also available when you type uname -a which is basically telling you about the
kernel that is being used by the operator system along with what kind of an architecture
the particular mission is and what is the operator system it is running and so on. When
you type meminfo okay cat meminfo will give you information about the memory and
this information is coming in various forms how much of free memory is there and how
much of the total memory is there etcetera.

And this is also available to us through other commands like for example free okay. So,
it is more readable free -h will actually give you in a human readable form how much of
memory is available for more applications to be launched on this particular operating
system. And you can also do cat partitions I need to tell you how many partitions are
there in this particular system if the hardest has multiple partitions it will show you and
it will also show you the size of it in terms of number of blocks.
But this is not very helpful you could actually get the help using the df command and the
df command will actually show you more information like what is a mount point in
which directory is that particular partition made available to the user and so on. And if
you type df -h it will give you the information in a human readable form with respect to
the size. So, for example my root partition happens to be 183 gigabytes and of which
only 30 gigabytes has been used.

And my home directory is having a size of 481 gigabytes out of it about 6.9 gigabytes
has been used. Now if you go to slash proc and look at the files there is some file which
actually looks rather big you know you can see this there is a k core file which occupies
a huge size and it appears that this is a very big number. If you calculate it would be how
many zeros if you calculate it would come out to be about 140 terabytes.

Obviously it cannot be a real file because our hard disk itself just one terabyte and
therefore this cannot be coming from the hard disk. So, this basically is a an entry that
tells you what is a maximum virtual memory the current Linux operating system is able
to handle okay theoretically and this comes with 47 bits for the virtual memory and two
respiratory comes to about 140 terabytes.

So, this directory is very magical because there are files which are having zero size but
have content. There are files which have a huge size but actually do not exist on the. So,
slash prop that way is a magical file system in which a lot of information is available for
you to look at to know more about system. There are a lot of folders that are also going
down with some names which are basically numbers these numbers correspond to what
record the process Id’s.

For every process that is running in the operating system there is an id and using these
folders. So, we can know more about those processes. Similarly the slash sys folder is
also the same kind of a file system which is actually a much more well organized than
slash block because it says like a newer development in the Linux and here in a very
neatly organized directory structure you would see that the information about the system
is all collected and available for you to read and process in your scripts o r any other use
that you may want to have.
So, let us go and explore some directory here. So, I will go to slash sys and then go to
the bus folder and in the bath I will go to usb and then I will go to devices and you see
that there are some there are some directories links that are available. So, these are all
devices that are actually usb type of devices. Now let me go to the one dash one
directories and there are some files that are here and I can just read about them.

So, like I say less manufacturer okay and it says JBL is a manufacturer okay and the less
product and it says JBL Quantum 300 is a product map. So, instantly this particular usb
device that we are looking at is this headphone that I am using right. Now to record my
audio. So, the usb device is JBL Quantum 300. Similarly other devices also can be
looked at. So, let us look at let us one dash and less manufacturer it is a pixel art is a
manufacturer less product it says dell M116 usb optical mouse that is this mouse which
is actually the usb device that we have looked at.

So, like this you know every device that is connected with the computer we can actually
know more and more details about it just by simply exploring the file system that is
already made available. So, slash sys and slash proc or two file systems which help us to
know more about the hardware and we will learn to process that information as we go
along. So I now encourage you to explore the file system and run the simple commands
that we have discussed till now to understand your machine a little bit more.
(Video End: 42:43)