Appendix 1: Common UNIX Commands

Introduction

This section covers most of the useful commands available on any UNIX oper 

ating system. None of the commands are covered in great detail, but enough

information is given to be a useful introduction for those not familiar with

the various UNIX commands. For more details on these and other commands,

there are two standard commands for getting documentation on programs

installed on the system: the man command and the info command. If in 

formation is desired for command foo, either man foo or info foo will provide

the available documentation. Not all packages provide info pages, while many

GNU packages don't provide man pages. Depending on the program involved

one or the other of these will be available. When the command is unknown

but some idea of functionality is known, a key word search can be made of the

man pages using the apropos command or man  k.

Note:

The term program and command have been used inter 

changeably in the previous discussion. This is because in

UNIX, all executable commands are, in fact, programs that

execute to perform their various tasks. Every program, and

thus, every command, is documented in some fashion or an 

other within the system. In a Debian system each package

places its copyright, changelogs, and any additional examples

or documents into the directory /usr/share/doc/