V3/man/man0/basinf

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HOW TO GET STARTED

This section provides the basic information
you need to get started on UNIX:
how to log in and log out,
how to communicate through your terminal,
and how to run a program.

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Logging in

You must call  UNIX from an appropriate terminal.
UNIX supports ASCII terminals typified by the TTY 37,
the GE Terminet 300, the Memorex 1240, and various
graphical terminals on the one hand, and IBM 2741-type
terminals on the other.

To use UNIX,
you must have
a valid UNIX user name,
which may be obtained, together with the telephone number, from the system administrators.

The same telephone number
serves terminals operating at all the standard speeds.
After a data connection is established,
the login procedure depends on what kind of terminal
you are using.

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TTY 37 terminal

UNIX will type out "login: "; you respond with
your user name.
From the TTY 37 terminal, and any other which has the "new-line"
function (combined carriage return and linefeed), terminate each line you type with the
"new line" key (not___ the "return" key).

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300-baud terminals

Such terminals include the GE Terminet 300, most display terminals,
Execuport, TI, and certain
Anderson-Jacobson terminals.
These terminals generally have a speed
switch which should be set at "300" (or "30" for
30 characters per second)
and a half/full duplex switch which should be set at
full-duplex.
(Note that this switch will often have to be changed
since MH-TSS requires half-duplex).
When a connection with UNIX is established, a few garbage
characters are typed (the login message at the wrong speed).
Depress the "break" key;
this is a speed-independent signal to UNIX that a 300-baud
terminal is in use.
UNIX will type "login: " at the correct speed; you type your
user name, followed by the "return" key.
Henceforth, the "return", "new line", or "linefeed" keys
will give exactly the same results.
Each line must be terminated with one of these keys; no one
is listening to you until the return is received.

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Selectric terminals

From an IBM 2741 or the Anderson-Jacobson Selectric terminal, no message will appear.
After the data connection is established,
press the "return" key.
UNIX should type "login: " as described above.
If the greeting does not appear after a few seconds,
unlock the keyboard by switching the terminal
to local and back to remote,
and type "return".
If necessary,
hang up and try again; something has gone wrong.

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For all these terminals, it is important
that you type your name in lower case if possible; if you type
upper case letters, UNIX
will assume that your terminal cannot generate lower-case
letters and will translate all subsequent upper-case
letters to lower case.

The evidence that you have successfully
logged in is that a UNIX program, the Shell,
will type a "%" to you.
(The Shell is described below under
"How to run a program".

For more information, consult
getty(VII), which discusses the login sequence in more
detail, and dc(IV), which discusses typewriter I/O.

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Logging out

There are three ways to log out:

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You can simply hang up the phone.
Hanging up is safe if you are at command level,
that is, if the Shell has just typed its prompt
signal "%".
It is also safe if you are in interactive system
programs, for example the editor.
It is unsafe if you are executing
a non-interactive program, or one of your own programs,
which either does not read the typewriter or ignores
the end-of-file indications which will result
from hanging up.
The reason is that UNIX, unlike most systems, does
not terminate a program simply because
it has been hung-up upon.

You can log out by typing an end-of-file indication
(EOT character, control "d") to the Shell.
The Shell will terminate and the "login: " message
will appear again.

You can also log in directly as another user
by giving a login command
(login (I)).

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How to communicate through your terminal

When you type to UNIX, a gnome deep in the system
is gathering your characters and saving them in a secret
place.
The
characters will not be given to a program
until you type a return, as described above
in
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Logging in.

UNIX typewriter I/O is full-duplex (except for Selectric
terminals).
It has full read-ahead, which means that you can
type at any time,
even while a program is
typing at you.
Of course, if you type during output, the output will
have the input characters interspersed.
However, whatever you type will be saved
up and interpreted in correct sequence.

There is a limit to the amount of read-ahead,
but it is generous and not likely to be exceeded unless
the system is in trouble.
When the read-ahead limit is exceeded, the system
stops echoing input characters,
and starts echoing "#" no matter what you typed.
The last character which was echoed correctly will be
received correctly by the program to which you were talking;
subsequent characters have been thrown away.

On a typewriter input line, the character "@"
kills all the characters typed before it, so typing mistakes
can be repaired on a single line.
Also, the character "#" erases the last character typed.
Successive uses of "#" erase characters back to, but
not beyond, the beginning of the line.
"@" and "#" can be transmitted to a program
by preceding them with "\\".
(So, to erase "\\", you need two "#"s).

The ASCII "delete" (a.k.a. "rubout") character is not passed to programs
but instead generates
an
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interrupt signal.
This signal
generally causes whatever program
you are running to terminate.
It is typically used to stop a long printout that
you don't want.
However, programs can arrange either to ignore
this signal altogether,
or to be notified when it happens (instead
of being terminated).
The editor, for example, catches interrupts and
stops what it is doing,
instead of terminating, so that an interrupt can
be used to halt an editor printout without
losing the file being edited.

The quit____ signal is generated
by typing the ASCII FS character.
It not only causes a running program to terminate
but also generates a file with the core image
of the terminated process.
Quit is useful
for debugging.

Besides adapting to the speed of the terminal,
UNIX tries to be intelligent about whether
you have a terminal with the "new line" function
or whether it must be simulated with carriage-return
and line-feed.
In the latter case, all input carriage returns
are turned to new-line characters (the standard
line delimiter)
and both a carriage return and a line feed
are echoed to the terminal.
If you get into the wrong mode, the stty command
(I) will rescue you.

Tab characters are used freely in UNIX source programs.
If your terminal does not have the tab function,
you can arrange to have them turned into spaces
during output, and echoed as spaces
during input.
The system assumes
that tabs are set every eight columns.
Again, the stty command (I)
will set or reset this mode.
Also, there is a file which, if printed on TTY 37
or TermiNet 300 terminals, will set the tab stops
correctly (tabs(VII)).

Section dc(IV) discusses typewriter I/O more fully.
Section kl(IV) discusses the console typewriter.

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How to run a program; The Shell

When you have successfully logged into UNIX, a program
called the Shell is listening to your terminal.
The Shell reads typed-in lines, splits them up
into a command name and arguments, and executes the command.
A command is simply an executable program.
The Shell looks first in your current directory
(see next section)
for a program with the given name,
and if none is there, then in a system directory.
There is nothing special about system-provided
commands except that they are kept in a directory
where the Shell can find them.

The command name is always the first word on an input line;
it and its arguments are separated from one another by
spaces.

When a program terminates, the Shell will ordinarily regain control and type 
a "%" at you to indicate that it is ready for another command.

The Shell has many other capabilities, which are described in detail in section
sh(I).

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The current directory

UNIX has a file system arranged in a hierarchy of directories.
When the system administrator gave you a user name,
he also created a directory for you (ordinarily
with the same name as your user name).
When you log in, any file
name you type is by default
in this directory.
Since you are the owner of this directory, you have
full permissions to read, write, alter, or destroy
its contents.
Permissions to have your will with other directories
and files will have been granted or denied to you
by their owners.
As a matter of observed fact, few UNIX users
protect their files from destruction,
let alone perusal, by other users.

To change the
current directory (but not the set of permissions you
were endowed with at login) use chdir(I).

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Path names

To reference files not in the current directory, you must
use a path name.

Full path names begin with "/", the name of the root directory of the
whole file system.
After the slash comes the name of each directory containing the next
sub-directory (followed by a "/") until finally the
file name is reached.
E.g.: "/usr/lem/filex" refers to file "filex" in directory "lem"; "lem"
is itself a sub-directory of "usr"; "usr" springs directly from the root
directory.

If your current directory has subdirectories,
the path names of files therein begin with
the name of the subdirectory (no prefixed "/").

Without important exception,
a path name may be used anywhere a file name is
required.

Important commands which modify the contents of files
are cp(I), mv(I), and rm(I),
which respectively copy, move (i.e. rename) and remove files.
To find out the status of files or directories, use ls(I) and stat(I).
See mkdir(I) for making directories; rmdir(I) for destroying them.

For a fuller discussion of the file system, see MM-71-1273-4.
It may also be useful to glance through
section II of this manual, which discusses
system calls, even if you don't intend
to deal with the system at the assembly-language level.

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Writing a program

To enter the text of a source program into a UNIX file, use ed(I).
The three principal languages in UNIX are
assembly language (see as(I)), Fortran (see fc(I)),
and C (see cc(I)).
After the program text has been entered through 
the editor
and written on a file, you can give the file
to the appropriate language processor as an argument.
The output of the language processor
will be left on a file in the current directory named "a.out".
(If the output is precious, use mv to move it to a less
exposed name soon.)
If you wrote in assembly language, you will probably
need to load the program with library subroutines; see
ld(I).  The other two language processors call
the loader automatically.

When you have finally gone through this entire process
without provoking any diagnostics, the resulting program
can be run by giving its name to the Shell
in response to the "%" prompt.

The next command you will need is db(I).
As a debugger, db is better than average for
assembly-language programs,
marginally useful for C programs
(when completed, cdb(I) will be a boon),
and virtually useless for Fortran.

Your programs can receive arguments from the command line
just as system programs do.  For assembly language programs,
see exec(II).

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Text processing

Almost all text is entered through the editor.
The commands most often used to write text on a terminal are:
cat(I), pr(I), roff(I), or nroff(I).

The cat command simply dumps ASCII text
on the terminal, with no processing at all.
The pr command paginates the text and supplies headings.
The nroff command is an elaborate text formatting program,
and requires careful forethought
in entering both the text and the formatting commands
into the input file.
The roff command is a somewhat less elaborate formatting
program, and requires somewhat less forethought.

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Surprises

Certain commands provide inter-user communication.
Even if you do not plan to use them, it would be
well to learn something about them, because someone else may
aim them at you.

To communicate with another user currently logged in,
write(I) is used.  To leave a message the presence of which will be
announced to another user when he next logs in, mail(I)
is used. 
The write-ups in the manual also suggest how to respond to
the two commands if you are a target.

When you log in, a message-of-the-day may greet you
before the first "%".