For Welcome to Linux course materials, please refer below.

Else if you want to access my main page, please click here.

Else to go to the main Linux materials page, here, thank you.

Dear Newbies,

Here are some of the basic commands to be covered in the first two sessions. Those listed here are just 16 out of the thousands of commands. Please explore other commands on your own, as well as the options. This page is best viewed with browsers such as Mozilla or Netscape.

Purpose Command Info Remarks
Administrative yppasswd Change password. Type the command, then enter your password at each prompt.
quota Display user's disk usage and limits. The first column will display the amount of kb the user is using. If the user has exceeded his/her quota, an asterisk (*) will appear besides this number. The quota given to each sps student is 100mb.
Mail pine - Program for internet news and email Screen-orientated message-handling system, where users can view, save, export, delete, print, reply, forward messages, compose them in a simple editor (Pico), and allows personal-preference features. Has many options, including "-attach filename", which allows sending of listed file as attachment; "-i", to start up in the Folder Index screen, etc. Commands inside pine are displayed at the bottom of the screen. SPS students have to use pine to access their SPS email.
Chatting ssh remote login program. Command is as follows: ssh loginname@host. Example: ssh usename@tinbergen. ssh is not a chatting program, but used to login to hosts whereby write or talk can then be used to communicate. Most SPSians will use "ssh sps.nus.edu.sg" so that they can talk to each other.
write send a message to another user. Command is: write username. Then type in your message, terminating with ^c. The user will get a message of this form: Message from yourname@yourhost on your tty at hh:mm ..
talk a visual communication program which copies lines from your screen to the other user, so that a real-time 'talk' can be achieved. Type: talk username. ^c to terminate. ^l to refresh screen. If somebody tries to contact you to talk, you will see: 
  Message from TalkDaemon@his_machine...
  talk: connection requested by his_name@his_machine.
  talk: respond with: talk his_name@his_machine.
Reply by typing in the same command above.
Directory ls list the contents of the directory. Interesting options include "-a" where all files are listed including hidden files, "-l" where file attributes are also listed, "--color" where different file formats will be listed in different colours.
cd change directory "cd" will return you to your home directory. "cd directoryname" will go to directoryname, "cd .." will go to the directory which contains the current one.
mkdir Creates a new directory. mkdir newdirectoryname.
rm Remove files. rm filename to be deleted To remove directories, use "rm -rf"
cp copy files to destination folder. copy files to be copied destinationfolder cp will create a new copy of the files in the destination folder. The number of files to be copied can be more than one in the command.
mv move files to destination folder. mv files to be moved destinationfolder. File will be removed from the current folder and moved to the destination folder. mv can also be used to rename files. Eg: mv file1 file2. My file1 will now be renamed to file2.
Help man Format and display the manual pages for commands. man command. Enter q to quit the manual pages. Try "man man".
Fun fortune Display a random, hopefully interesting adage. Don't try "fortune -o". =P
Printing lpr Print named files. lpr filename to be printed
xpp Gives graphical or command line printing.

: m.o.k.h.o.i.n.a at sps dot nus dot edu dot sg