Linux Basics

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Linux Basics

To navigate through the filesystem, you can use the commands cd to change a directory, ls to list files and folders within the current directory, and pwd to show the path of the current directory.

1. Type pwd to list the current working directory (Hint: it should be /home/summer)
2. Type ls to list all files and folders in your directory
3. Type mkdir Test to create a new folder Test
4. Type ls again to list all files and folders in your directory
5. Type cd Test to go into the folder Test (Hint: you can use the Tab-key to autocomplete)
6. Type pwd to list the current working directory
7. Type ls to list all files and folders in your directory

There are a couple of text editors for the shell: nano, emacs, vim are common editors. They’re more or less difficult to handle. If you use the shell on a regular basis you may learn emacs or vim, the easiest editor is nano, which we’re using in the following steps.

• Start a nano instance by typing the following command:

nano test.txt

It will create a new file named test.txt.

• Insert any text and save the file by pressing CTRL+O. nano is asking you where to save the file - answer the dialog by pressing Enter. Use CTRL+X to exit nano.

8. Type pwd to list the current working directory
9. Type cat test.txt to show the file's content
10. Type cp test.txt new_file.txt to copy the file’s content to new_file.txt (which creates a new file or overwrites an existing file)
11. Type cd .. to move one directory up
12. Type pwd to list the current working directory
13. Type rm -r Test to remove the directory and its content recursively
14. Type ls to list all files and folders in your directory

Modern Linux distributions use systemd as a process-manager. They don’t use the administrator account (root) with a password, but rather allow specific users to login as the superuser with their own passwords. Use sudo -i to access an interactive shell as root.

Management over Network

With the network configured properly it is possible to manage the VM remotely over a secure shell (ssh). A commonly used program for this is Putty.

• Start Putty on your laptop - use the configured IP address
• Observe the VM in VMWare Player while sending the sudo reboot command from Putty