Introduction to UNIX

An operating system is a means of communicating with a computer; on a VAX the operating system is VMS, on a PC it is DOS, and on a Alpha it is UNIX.

UNIX is one of the most popular operating systems in the World, it runs on more platforms than any other, it is not tied down to any architecture and it has a rich assortment of utilities and commands.

UNIX is available on so many platforms there is no need to learn a new operating system each time you change hardware vendor, it is far cheaper than any other operating system, and it is slowly standardising itself. The problem many new users discover is the fact it was designed by computer specialists for computer specialists, and consequently the syntax of the commands are very user unfriendly. But X Windows has conquered this problem.

Connection via a PC

To access a UNIX host from a PC in one of the computer rooms a connection must be made to it from either DOS or Winows, this is done by means of a program called telnet. We shall be using a UNIX host called thunder.

Thunder is the name given to the newest and fastest machine the University possesses.

It is a Digital 2100 Server Model A500MP and was purchased to provide the UNIX based compute server. The configuration is a three processor system with 384Mb of main memory and 10 Gbytes of disk. The operating system is Digital's OSF/1 unix.

Here is an example of a telnet call:{NFS} M:\>telnet thunder OR

Note: if you need to use graphics orwould like a multi-windows environment then you can use eXceed/W rather than

telnet

{NFS} M:\>telnet thunder

OSF/1 (thunder) (ttyp8)

login: iss133

Password:

Last login: Tue Oct 11 09:45:22 from simone

DEC OSF/1 [EXT] V3.2 (Rev. 214); Mon Apr 24 16:15:57 BST 1995

DEC OSF/1 V3.2 Worksystem Software (Rev. 214)

Welcome to Thunder!

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| If you have any problems using this system or software on this system |

| please send E-mail to: |

| helpdesk |

| |

| explaining in sufficient detail what you require help with. |

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Good Morning! There are currently 6 user(s) running 30 programs.

thunder:/homedir/iss133>_

Below is what you should see when you login to thunder.

Logout

To exit the system use:

thunder:/homedir/iss133> exit

Password

yppasswd will change a user's password, by first prompting the user for the old password followed by the new password which is then typed in again for verification. The password can be of any length but must be greater than six characters, and the characters can be any letter/digit/punctuation mark or escape sequence.

thunder:/homedir/iss133> yppasswd iss033

Old NIS Password:

New Password:

Verification:

NIS Passwd changed on clss1

Note: you should not allow any other person to login as you, if you think your account has been compromised then please change your password.