A Very Basic Glossary of Basic UNIX Commands
and Internet Terms
passwd
............. change your password
logout
............. logs off system (also control d )
ls -al
................. show directory, list in alphabetical order
pwd .................print working
directory
cd (/path/path)................. change
current directory
cd /
................. change current directory to root level /
cd ../
change directory to next directory above
mkdir
.............. make a directory
rmdir ..............
remove directory (rm -r to delete folders with files)
rm -R
................. remove files
touch (filename)
Écreate an empty file
man (command)
...... shows help on a specific command
pico (filename)
.... easy to use text editor to edit files
pine
............... easy to use mailer
more (file)
........ views a file, pausing every screenful
telnet (host)
...... connect to another Internet site
ftp (host)
......... connects to a FTP site
grep
............... search for a string in a file
head...............
show the first few lines of a file
tail
............... show the last few lines of a file
who
................ shows who is logged into the local system
w
.................. shows who is logged on and what they're doing
chmod
.............. changes permissions on a file or directory
FTP File
Transfer Protocol (protocol for transferring
files over the internet)
http Hyper
Text Transfer Protocol (protocol for
transferring web pages)
HTML Hyper Text Markup
Language (language used for basic web
pages)
URL Uniform Resource Locator (standard for specifying places on the Internet)
DNS Domain
Name System (associates text names with numeric IP addresses)
IP Internet
Protocol (uses numeric addresses to
define hosts on the internet)