• UsersGuide
• CommandLineInterface

Command Line Interface

Introduction

A command-line interface (CLI) is a mechanism for interacting with a computer operating system or software by typing commands to perform specific tasks. This text-only interface contrasts with the use of a mouse pointer with a graphical user interface (GUI) to click on options, or menus on a text user interface (TUI) to select options. The default command-line interface used by minix is Almquist shell (also known as A Shell, ash and sh) which was originally Kenneth Almquist's clone of the SVR4-variant of the Bourne shell; it is a fast, small, POSIX-compatible Unix shell designed to replace the Bourne shell in later BSD distributions.

Function key mappings

Note: Function keys are only valid from the first console (ttyc0).

Useful Command Lines (Shell)

1. man man -- an interface to the online reference manuals.

2. passwd -- change (own) password.

   1. passwd user change the password of user user (root only)

3. ls -- list directory contents.

   1. passwd user change the password of user user (root only)

   2. ls -al -- long list

   3. ls -alt -- long list, sorted by modification time

   4. ls -alS -- long list (GNU/Linux only), sorted by file size

4. cd directory -- change to directory

   1. cd -- change to default/home directory

   2. pwd -- show current directory

5. Basic File Utilities

   1. cp file1 file2 -- copy file1 to file2

   2. rm file1 -- remove (delete) file1

   3. mv file1 file2 move (change) file1 to file2

   4. mkdir dir make directory dir

   5. rmdir dir remove directory dir

6. More File Utilities

   1. cat file -- read a file

   2. more file -- read a file per screen

   3. ln -s -- file sfile -- make a symbolic link from file to sfile

   4. grep aworld file -- search string aword inside file using regular expression

   5. sort file -- sort a file