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H-NET H-NET H-NET H-NET H-NET H-NET H-NET H
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E ** H-Net Magazine ** E
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H Volume One, Issue 1, File #03 of 20 H
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E An Introduction to UNIX, by MINOTAUR. E
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H-NET H-NET H-NET H-NET H-NET H-NET H-NET H
UNIX is widely-touted as 'the operating sustem of the future', though in fact
it dates from 1969 (it was developed originally by Bell Laboratories, which
runs most of the telephone systems in the USA). Since then it's been under
continuous development; so it's not so much an old operating system as a fairly
mature one, if you see what I mean. Hackernet BBS has many unix files for you.
Unix gets brownie points straight off because it was conceived by a user of
computers rather than a software specialist or some other sort of software
designer. So it is relatively easy to use; which nearly all other software the
prime goal often seems to be to make money, or to sell more hardware and
software, or whatever.
In brief, UNIX is a general-purpose, multi-user operarting system with a clever
method of holding files. It's a complex system, which means both that it is
rich in facilities and difficult to get to grip with - until now!.....
BEGINNER'S GUIDE TO THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF UNIX
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The aim of this first textfile is to give an insight into the fundamentals of
UNIX. Subsequent textfiles will delve into all areas of UNIX in greater depth.
WHAT IS UNIX?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The UNIX operating system can be divided into a number of distinct parts. First
there is the part of the system which performs all of the interface to the
hardware, scheduling disks, managing memory, handling terminal I/O and
generallu handling any requests to and from the devices on the system. This
part of UNIX is called the UNIX Kernel. It is in fact one large, compiled 'C'
program which is kept on the hard disk and loaded into memory when the system
is booted up. The UNIX Kernel is always kept in memory because practically
everything that is done on UNIX uses the Kernel. Buts on its own, it is of
little use. There is no point in just having an interface to the hardware - an
itnerface to the user is also required. This is provided by the UNIX shell.
The shell is another name for a TIP (Terminal Interface Program) or a JCL (Job
Control Language). Its job is to read input from the terminal and execute the
right programs, depending on the input. A program which is executing in UNIX
is called a process. In fact, the shell is also a 'C' program which is
executing for each terminal which is logged on. It reads input from the
terminal, interprets the input in various ways and starts the appropriate
processes.
As well as interpreting input and executing processes, the shell has its own
control-flow constructs and it can therefore be used as a programming language.
It also handles pipes and redirection of I/O which will be the subject of a
later textfile.
The way the UNIX shell works is much the same as other operating systems. It
displays a prompt, normally '