The Linux Command Line
The operating system on your Raspberry Pi is a version of Linux. In all probability, it looks a bit like Windows, or -- more likely -- like the Mac OS. It has a graphical user interface (GUI) that allows you to interact with your folders and files by double-clicking, right- or left-clicking, or dragging and dropping. If you want to open a program, you look for it on a menu called something like "Applications".
Notes: That's all very well, but there is another way to interact with Linux: using the command line interface (CLI). With the CLI there are no images; nothing to click on. To get your computer to do something, you must type a properly constructed text command. Often, you'll only know that your command has been successfully executed because your computer won't respond. If it does respond, something has gone wrong and it's giving you an error message.
That sounds like hard work. Do we really want to bother with it? Yes, we do! For a start, by default, some versions of Linux boot directly into the CLI. To open the GUI, with all its lovely windows and menus, you then need to type the command "startx" and press Return. But that's by no means the only reason to get to grips with the CLI.
With the command line you can do things that you can't do using the GUI and you can do things easily that are difficult in the GUI. Compared with the graphical interface, the command line hardly uses any processing or graphics power, so it's great if you have heavy work for your computer to do. And, if you're connecting remotely to a Raspberry Pi that doesn't have its own monitor, then you'll have to use the CLI.
If you're new to Linux, you may not be familiar with the command line in general and with Linux commands in particular (they're sometimes similar to their Windows equivalents, but often they're completely different). This chapter is a quick introduction to the magic of the command line. It contains everything you need to get started.
Lesson 6.1: Commands are just programs
When you type into the terminal you are running programs. Most of the commands listed here run programs that give you the ability to command the system to do something. When you add programs to your Raspberry Pi, you will be able to run more commands.
If you enter a command and it doesn't work, it may well mean that the program isn't installed yet. For instance, if you try to create a new text file called "My Linux Commands" using the Nano text editor, you would type:
sudo nano "My Linux Commands"
But it might be that, instead of opening the new text file, your system returns the error message:
bash: nano: command not found
This just means that you have not installed Nano yet. However, most of the commands described on this page are the kind of "housekeeping" commands that come as default, so you shouldn't have this problem. Each program has an original author who is acknowledged at the bottom of the main page. Don't worry too much about the actual commands used there -- I will explain everything as we go along.
Notes: The Bash shell To use the CLI, you need to know commands. The default command set is contained in the "shell" you are using. There are lots of shells out there, but the one on this Raspberry Pi is called "Bash". Bash is the default command line shell on most versions of Linux, as well as Mac OS, so it's well worth learning. This chapter covers many of the most common and useful commands. If you can't find the command you need, try looking online. There are lots of good guides on the internet for using the Linux command line.
$ man <command>
If you know the command you want to use, but don't know exactly how to use it -- for instance, you don't know exactly the right "syntax" -- you can use the "man" (manual) command in Linux. At the command line you could type:
man
Displays information about the target, sourced from online reference manuals.
Tip... The "syntax" of a command means the way it should be written to make it work. That means the order of the words, as well as any important punctuation that is also necessary.
Or, you could use the "info" command:
$ info <command>
info
Displays online documentation about the target.
Notes:
In the examples above, substitute
To find out more about Bash, take a look at its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bash%28Unixshell%29 PLACEHOLDER
Lesson 6.2: Command syntax and file structure
Commands take the form:
<Command> | <Switches> | <Parameters> | <Target>
In guides, such as this one, the brackets "<" and ">" are often used to indicate the place a command would take in a string of text being typed into the CLI. The horizontal line "|" is used to denote "or". Confused? Okay, let's look at the example above. We would read that as saying that commands can be used by themselves OR they can be used with: o S witches: single letters, preceded by a hyphen, that adjust what the command does o Parameters: things that the command needs to know in order to work o A target: the thing (such as a file) that the command will be applied to Let's look at an example. We'll start with the "ls" command, which you can use to see a list of a folder's contents. ls -l /home/brian Command Switch Target
This command tells the command line to list, in long format, the contents of the directory "/home/brian". The command is "ls"; the switch "-l" tells Linux that you want the list in long format; and the target of this command is the directory "/home/brian". In this example, there are no parameters, so that part of the command is just skipped.
Notes: ls Lists the contents of directories. For a slightly more detailed example, let's look at the "mount" command, which tells Linux to incorporate a new file system (such as a CD or DVD) into its own file system structure so that you can browse it.
mount -F smbfs //workgroup;fred:[email protected]/homes /mnt/net
Command Switch Parameters Target
This command tells the operating system to use the username "fred" and password "foo" (parameters) to make the shared drive called "homes" on the Windows server at 192.168.1.99 (parameter) appear in the directory tree at the point "/mnt/net" (target) using the Server Message Block Filing System (the -F switch). mount Makes a file structure available at a new location.
Navigating the file system using "cd"
The file system in Linux is hierarchical with nested directories (often called "folders") in a "tree". The top of the directory structure is denoted by the symbol "/", and directories underneath "/" are referred to using "paths", just like URLs in a web browser.
To go to a particular place in the directory structure, you use the command "cd", which stands for "change directory", followed by its location in the tree. For instance, the following command will take you to Brian's "Documents" folder in his home directory.
cd /home/brian/Documents
If you want to move up the directory tree, use the command:
cd ..
For example, if you're working in the folder "/home/brian/Documents/Project", the command "cd .." would take you back to "/home/brian/Documents". Make sure you leave a space between the letters "cd" and the two dots, otherwise the command won't work.
To find out more about the "cd" command see its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cd_%28command%29 cd Changes the current working directory.
Notes: Tip... The names of files and directories (folders) are case-sensitive in Linux, so the file "mystuff" is different from the file "Mystuff".
Listing the files and folders in a particular place
The "ls" command lists all contents of directory you're working in. There are a range of switches you can use with "ls" to make it display exactly the files you're interested in and all the useful information about those files. We've listed a few of those switches here: l " ls", the command with no switches, lists all the file in the current directory. l " ls -l" lists the files and displays the long version of the information about each file or directory. Output may be colour-coded depending on the terminal preferences that you have set. l " ls -R" asks for a "recursive" list -- that is, a list including the contents of sub-directories as well as this directory. l " ls -A" forces the system to show "hidden" files. Hidden files have names that start with a dot, which won't usually be visible when doing a normal directory list.
Notes: Let's look at two examples. In the first, we use the plain "ls" command with no switches.
$ ls
An_Gott_und_meine_Mutter.mid Domestic Programming Test.mid
An_Gott_und_meine_Mutter.mscz Engineering Quantum Physics Tutoring
appliances FluidR3 _ GM.ins School Windaz
In the second, we use "ls -l". This displays the files in long format, telling you, among other things, the size, owner and security setting on each file.
$ ls -l
total 336
-rw-rw-r--. 1 brian brian 2429
Apr 2 20:27 AnGottundmeineMutter.mid -rw-rw-r--. 1 brian brian 4085 Apr 2 19:52 AnGottundmeineMutter.mscz drwxrwxr-x. 4 brian brian 4096 Apr 2 20:38 appliances -rw-rw-r--. 1 brian brian 10919 Apr 2 19:52 brotplot.odt
Don't worry, we'll go into the details of this information later. To find out more about the "ls" command, take a look at its Wikipedia Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ls
Change ownership of directories and files
In the long List above, the files are owned by Brian and are also in the Brian group. What if we wanted to change the ownership of some of those files? Then we would use the "chown" command.
We'll use the file "brotplot.odt" as an example. Let's say we want to make Fred the file's owner. We would use the command:
$ chown fred brotplot.odt
If we run the command "ls -l" again, we will now see the result:
-rw-rw-r--. 1 fred brian 10919 Apr 2 19:52 brotplot.odt
The file is still in group Brian but is now owned by Fred. But what if we want to make the user "Foo" the owner of the file and also move the file to the "foo" group. We'd use the command:
$ chown foo:foo brotplot.odt
If we use "ls -l" again to see the long-format name of our file, we will see:
-rw-rw-r--. 1 foo foo 10919 Apr 2 19:52 brotplot.odt
To find out more about "chown" command see its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chown
Notes: chown Changes the ownership of one of more files. While we're at it, take a look at "chgrp" to see how it compares: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chgrp chgrp Changes the group of one of more files.
Change access to directories and files When you use the "-l" switch to see the long list of information a directory's contents, the results you see are all preceded by a string of letters and dashes. For instance:
-rw-rw-r--. 1 fred students 10919 Apr 2 19:52 brotplot.odt
The first character in the sequence, in this case a dash, tells us what the object is. The most commonly-used characters are:
d Indicates a directory
l
Indicates a link
-
Indicates a file
Our example above starts with a dash, so we know it's a file. In this case, it's
actually a word processor file.
The nine characters that follow, describe access rights for the owner (user), group and the world (everyone else who may be able to access the file), in that order, each with three characters. The characters used here are:
r
Read access
w Write access
x Permission to execute the program
-
No access of this type
So, if all three groups had all three types of access, we would see "rwxrwxrwx".
However, whenever someone doesn't have an access type, its letter is replaced
with a dash.
If we again look at our example above, we can see that:
l
Brian has read and write access to the file.
l Members
of the group called "students" also have read and write access to
the file.
l
Everyone else (the "world") has only read access to the file.
The "x" flag is not listed at all. Remember, x stands for the ability to execute a file. If the x flag is not set then the file will not run as a program. But what if we want to change the file's permissions? There are various ways to use the "chmod" command to do this, but probably the easiest is to use these groups:
u for user/owner
g for group
o for other (everyone else)
a for all three
Notes: Now, let's try out the "chmod" command: chmod o+w brotplot.odt This means add write access for the "other" group to "brotplot.odt". Add is indicated by the "plus" sign.
chmod a-r brotplot.odt
This means remove read access for the all three (user, group and other) from "brotplot.odt". Remove is indicated by the "minus" sign.
chmod u+x brotplot.odt
This means add execute access for the user/owner to "brotplot.odt". To find out more about the "chmod" command see its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chmod
Notes: chmod Changes the access mode (permissions) of one or more files.
Lesson 6.3: The superuser
The "sudo" command introduces the "superuser" or "root user". The term "root" is the name for the main administrator in a "Unix-like" system, such as Linux. There are many commands that only the root user can run. Depending on the version of Linux you are using, you will either have to log on as the root user or prefix your command with "sudo". The default Debian distribution of Linux, for instance, has no root password set. So you will have to use the "sudo" command.
By using "sudo", you're saying, "Do the following command as the root user." When you do this, you will be asked for your password and, if you have the system permissions of a root user (commonly called "being in the admin group"), then the command will be run. If you don't have root permissions, you will get an error message.
Let's look at the example of adding a new user to your system, something that only the root user can do. On Debian, the command would look like this:
sudo adduser brian
This will start a script allowing you to set up a new user called "brian". If you ever try to do something in the command line and get the error message, "Only root can ..." then try the sudo command -- it may fix your problem. To find out more about "sudo" command, see its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sudo
Notes: sudo If you have the appropriate permissions, execute the following command as the superuser. Becoming the admin user There is another way of doing things as root user and that is by using the "su" command, which stands for "substitute user" (or superuser). Invoking the "su" command means "become the root user". As before, you'll be asked to enter your password to make sure that you have superuser rights. Once you have successfully authenticated with your password, all commands run as the superuser. In some systems, however, you won't be able to use the "su" command because, by default, the root user isn't enabled. In this case, you will have to enable the root user, using this command: passwd root su - rm -r -f /* $ rm -r -f ./* You will be asked to enter and then confirm a new root password. Assuming you can manage to enter the same password twice, you now have a root user and you can issue the command: When you enter passwords in Unix-like systems, the prompt remains blank: no blobs or asterisks stand in for the characters in your password. Don't be put off; the password is being entered nevertheless. Finally, a word of warning: if you habitually do everything as the root user, eventually you will do something both educational and disastrous. For example, you could invoke: This will delete all the files in the whole system. Or you might absent-mindedly type: That would just delete the files in the current directory. And you do not usually get warnings as root user (other than this one). The first thing you'll know about your error is when all your files have suddenly vanished. Only use root privileges when you really need them. To find out more about the "su" command. see its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Su_%28Unix%29 Notes: Tip... Don't ever use these commands when operating as a superuser! su Become a superuser. passwd Create or change a password associated with the identified user.
Lesson 6.4: Creating and destroying files and directories
Finally, let's look at creating and destroying file and directories, as well as taking
a closer look at the mount command.
Notes:
Create a new empty file
To create a new empty file, go to where you want the file to be and type:
$ touch
Remove a directory
To delete a directory, go its location and type:
$ rm -r -f
Notes: rmdir Remove (delete) one or more directories in the current location, provided they are empty. Connect to a device or filing system The "mount" command allows you to connect a Unix system to external devices. There is no "C" drive, as in Windows. What happens in Linux is that a device is "mounted" somewhere in the filing system. When you navigate to that place, the items offered by the device will appear at that point. This is a complex command. The switches, parameters and target of the mount command will vary according to the protocol of the system being mounted. Some things will "auto-mount". This is why, when you plug an SD card into a modern Linux system, the filing system will automatically pick it up. Manual mounting requires a "mount point". That means a directory that will be filled with the mounted device when it is mounted. Often, this is in the directory "/mnt/" somewhere. Generally, before mounting new media, you must first ensure that there is a mount point. If there isn't, then you must create a directory at the point needed: for instance... $ mkdir /mnt/netfolder
You must also make sure that you use the necessary switches, parameters and directories. For instance, from the previous exercise: mount -F smbfs //workgroup;fred:[email protected]/homes /mnt/net
This, as we learned earlier, tells the system to mount the shared drive called "homes" on the Windows server at 192.168.1.99 , in the directory tree at the point "/mnt/net", using the Server Message Block Filing System (the -F switch). To find out more about the "mount" command, see its Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_%28Unix%29
Notes: Further learning The commands presented here are just a small selection of all the commands available on your system. You can find a comprehensive list of Linux commands on the O'Reilly website: http://www.oreillynet.com/linux/cmd