Unix Notes

These are some crib notes of things I have found useful. They are probably only useful for Unix beginners and are not intended to replace reading the manual. Please tell me of other useful sites; I recommend these:

• UNIXhelp for Users - developed at the University of Edinburgh
• Copeland & Haemer's ``Work'' Columns

The notes

• Running programs - running, suspending, resuming, scheduling and otherwise managing tasks
• Finding files - four different ways
• Pagers - how to read and search files, program output, man pages or any text.
• Shell scripts - a (not great) introduction
• Quick Fixes - Some common tasks
• X11 Screen Colours - for "xsetroot -solid <color>", etc. Also try "Meta-x list-colors-display" in emacs.

Miscellaneous Info

Things people have asked me that have a quick answer or "tips of the day":

I try to run the program "polysim" I've compiled, but it says "command not found"
Try ./polysim
There is a reason for this. Imagine you decided to look at the home directory of a malicious user and he had put a script called ls containing "rm -Rf ~/*" there. You would not be best pleased if typing ls ran that script!

How can I easily kill my hung X windows application?
Run xkill and click on the hung window.

Middle click on the main body of Netscape, Mozilla, Konqueror or Opera windows to go to a URL in the clipboard.

My keyboard isn't layed out properly in X-windows.
Try xkeycaps.

Help! My terminal is mangled.
Try:
tput reset
There are lots of other things to try, but they don't usually work for me if that doesn't. My xterms can be fixed by Ctrl-Middle-Click and choosing "Do Full Reset". Another useful keyboard combination is Ctrl-l, which redraws a terminal. Another thing to check is: did you press Ctrl-s? If so press Ctrl-q.

How can I quickly print out my source code?
Sending text straight to lpr normally produces ugly results. The a2ps utility is fabulous: by default it does some syntax highlighting, provides page headings and prints two pages to a sheet. It also has a zillion options, so check the man page if it doesn't do what you want. Your version may send output straight to the printer, standard output or a file by default. It is worth making sure the output goes to a ps file and checking it with ghostview on your first use.

How do I stop that bloody beep?
To turn the system bell off:
xset -b b off
To make it quieter and less piercing:
xset b 61 104 36