Things Unix

A Guide to “Things Unix” on the Net...
(General Unix and Terminal.app related)

This page was last updated on 19-April-2011

CLI Primers and Tutorials
Mac OS X FAQ (shells) – Mac OS X specific CLI/Shell FAQ’s Mac OS X FAQ (OS X \| UNIX) – Mac OS X Unix Tutorial Using the shell (Terminal) in Mac OS X – A primer on Mac OS X Unix Command Line Primer – Apple’s page Working in the Shell Environment – Shell characteristics, variables, alias and history, scripts, etc. Today’s UNIX – O’Reilly ONLamp article; good primer and overview for newbies; some discussion of software installation tools Introduction to UNIX and Linux – Tutorial lectures System Logging – Primer on Unix logging see also: Learning/Primers/History section on this page
CLI General Reference
A Guide to UNIX Shell Quoting – A good resource for this sometimes mysterious topic Shell Tips Mac OS X Hacking Tools – Mac OS X specific CLI tools Apple Macintosh OS X Commands – Mac OS X-specific CLI commands added or substantially tailored by Apple Mac OS X Development Tools Overview – Index of various tools Linux Power Tools – Some useful CLI tools UNIX Command Summary – Abridged list Unix resources and basic instruction SUDO Main Page – All things SUDO Eliminating Root with SUDO – O’Reilly ONLamp article see also: sed, grep and perl sections
I/O and Process Control
Working With the Unix Shell – Overview of redirection and process control
Unix Filesystem
Working with Directories – pwd, cd, mkdir, rmdir, and mv commands; file and directory access permissions; group ownership, and locating files or text within files Working with Files – Looking at file contents; copying, erasing, renaming, and printing files; introduction to redirection, pipes, and filters Mac OS X File Systems – Describes HFS+ and Mac OS X related file system issues pdisk for the Mac OS – Apple partition-table editor; similar to fdisk utility File and Directory Permissions and Access – Overview of Unix directory permissions Working With Directories – Managing/navigating Unix directories Essential CLI Tools for Mac OS X – Good info on the file system Finding Things in UNIX – O’Reilly ONLamp article Configuring and Using NFS – Fileservers Unix style
CLI Backup Tools
Understanding Archivers – Backing up Unix boxes Backing up Files with Tar – Primer on Unix tar utility Archiving with Pax – The best of tar and cpio?
sed
sed – Manual sed, a stream editor – GNU sed manual FAQ about sed, the stream editor – A good reference sed Tutorial – Detailed tutorial sed Tutorial – A brief tutorial sed Basics – Tutorial/FAQ sed advanced Usage – Tutorial/FAQ sed one-liners – Collection of sed scripts/examples sed, the stream editor – DOS-centric, but useful info/links
grep
grep_tutorial – Concise usage overview grep Tutorial – Detailed tutorial Grep this – Using grep, fgrep, and egrep to search for strings of words grep – May have to copy/paste link into browser; local MacOS X page
Regular Expressions (regex)
Regular Expressions Reference Sheet – A regex quick reference chart Regular Expression Quick Reference – Gordon McKinney’s regex quick reference chart (PDF) Using Regular Expressions – Primer/Tutorial (includes backreferences) A Tao of Regular Expressions – Tutorial Regular Expressions explained – Tutorial Regular-Expressions.info – Tutorial, Tools & Languages, Examples, Books & Reference Grouping & Backreferences – Backreference primer Regular expression examples – From Wikipedia Regular expressions in MySQL – Limited to the SELECT statement? Adding Regular Expressions To Your Cocoa Application – MOKit adds regex to Cocoa
awk
Effective AWK Programming – GNU awk user’s guide The AWK Manual - One-Liners – Examples of simple/useful awk commands AWK One-Liners – Examples of simple/useful awk commands AWK is your friend – An awk primer AWK – An awk primer Famous Awk One-Liners Explained – Good coders code, great reuse
perl
The "s///" Operator Substitution and translation tutorial Beginner's Introduction to Perl Perl regular expressions for the common man Perl tutorial Perl Predefined Variables (pdf) Article series "Perl One-Liners Explained" Using ProjectBuilder for editing Perl scripts SAGE - Perl Practicum – “Intended to demystify some of the more occult aspects of Perl programming” CamelBones – Write Cocoa apps using Perl PerlPad – Perl code execution as a Mac OS X system service
perl One-liners
PERL One Liners Cultured Perl: One-liners 101 Cultured Perl: One-liners 102 Perl One Liners Perl one-liners Famous Perl One-Liners Explained Tom Christiansen’s Perl One-Liners Perl as a command line utility tool
perl Manual
Perl regular expressions (perlre) Perl builtin functions (perlfunc) Perl syntax (perlsyn) Perl traps for the unwary (perltrap) – Common mistakes to avoid, organized by programming language Perl predefined variables (perlvar) Perl operators and precedence (perlop) Perl FAQ’s (perlfaq)
SSH
Open SSH – Secure Shell terminal program Breaking Firewalls with OpenSSH and PuTTY – A poor man’s VPN SSH FAQ

Apache Server, HTML, CGI
see: Things Webmastering
eMail
see: Things eMail – includes SPAM countermeasures
Shells
A survey of Unix shells – Comparison of various shells UNIX shell differences and how to change your shell – Comparison of various shells Which Unix Shell Should I Use? – Comparison of various shells Shells - A Rather Confusing Topic? – Comparison; startup files; shortcuts Questions pertaining to the various shells – Aliases, variables, configuration files BASH – Bourne–Again SHell Home Page BASH – GNU Overview and downloading BASH links – Newsgroups, mailing lists, doc’s, sources, download, etc. GNU bash manuals – Official GNU manuals for bash (various formats/sizes) Bash Reference Manual – HTML (592K bytes) - entirely on one web page BASH(1) – Manual Page Using Bash's History Effectively Prompt magic – Customizing the Bash prompt Mac OS X BASH: Customize Your Prompt – A little Color, Invoke A Script & Other Prompt Options Z Shell – Designed for interactive use; incorporates many useful features of bash, ksh, and tcsh A Case for the Z Shell
Shell Scripting
Shell Scripting Primer – A multi-page primer from Apple Advanced Bash Scripting Guide – Available on-line, as tarball, or PDF Unix shell scripting with sh/ksh – Includes some bash BashPitfalls – Common errors in Bash programming Mac OS X Management Shell Script Library A quick guide to writing scripts using the bash shell – Basics like variable expansion, conditional testing (Test command), looping & command substitution Writing Robust Bash Shell Scripts – Some good tips
Open Source Software
Fink – Use to install FreeBSD ports collection (Open Source software) GNU Project – Free Software Foundation The GNU Mac OS X Archive – Mac OS X friendly free software from the GNU Project GNU-Darwin – Free software for Mac OS X Mac Open Source Software Directory – Maintained by O'Reilly and Associates Darwin Info Apple‘s open source projects Open Office – A full-featured office productivity suite providing a near drop-in replacement for M$ Office; not yet Aqua compatible, but currently runs under X11 AbiWord – A free word processing program similar to M$ Word X-CD-Roast – A free word CD/DVD burning program; not Aqua compatible, but currently runs under X11 eGovOS – Open Source for Government OpenOSX – Mac OS X “value-added” Open Source software for about $30 on CD; checkout this web site before buying from them, however! Note: Open Source software may be found in other categories too; it’s not exclusive to this section.
Emulators (and non-emulators)
Bochs Project Page – A highly portable IA-32 PC emulator (e.g. 386, 486, Pentium) written in C++ Bochs – Mac OS X downloads QEMU CPU Emulator – Multiplatform, multi-CPU emulator; supposedly fast Wine – Allows you to run unmodified Windows binaries on Intel Unix boxes Darwine – Wine for Mac OS X (i.e. run unmodified Windows binaries on Macintosh); uses QEMU emulator and Wine CrossOver Office – Based on Wine (for Macintels) Emulation.net – Various Windoze emulators for Mac’s
Flavors of Unix
NetBSD – Focuses on portability to different platforms OpenBSD – Focuses on security at all levels of the system FreeBSD – BSD on Intel boxes MicroBSD – A stripped down, hardened, secure, Posix1e, small foot print OS for x86, Alpha, Sun, PPC Trusted BSD – Security extensions for FreeBSD (and Mac OS X) DragonflyBSD – A project in search of a succinctly defined goal A Tale of Two Systems – BSD vs Linux Darwin/Mac OS X: The Fifth BSD – Talks about five flavors of BSD Unix Rosetta Stone for Unix – Compares commands/tools for the various flavors of Unix OpenBSD/mac68k - Want to use a 68K Mac as a router, mail or DNS server, etc.? OpenBSD/macppc - Supports some PPC Mac's, but not all.
Linux (Unix-like OS)
Linux OnLine – A non-BSD Unix-like operating system that focuses on supporting the widest possible range of computing systems and users Trustix Secure Linux – A distribution for servers with a heavy focus on security and stability CentOS: Community ENTerprise Operating System – A server oriented distro; based on Red Hat/Fedora Yellow Dog Linux Comparison of Linux distributions – from Wikipedia Linux.com – Linux news, information, software, documentation, and tutorials Linux/mac68k - Prefer Linux to OpenBSD? Mac on Linux – Lets you run Mac OS under Linux/ppc
Learning/Primers/History
The Art of Unix Programming – History, architecture, design, technical, etc. Introduction to Unix – In HTML or PDF UNIX help for users – Helpful user information An Overview of the UNIX Operating System – From Bell Labs (where UNIX was born) New to BSD? – A resource for BSD newbies Screaming Electron – Forum for BSD Resources for Newbies – FreeBSD, general Unix, and X Windows UNIX for beginners UNIX Tutorial for Beginners Useful Unix Links – Links, books, etc. The Roots of Mac OS X Oral History of Unix – Interview with Ken Thompson The Creation of the UNIX *Operating System – From Bell Labs Unix History Twenty years of Berkeley Unix Unix Reference Library – Some factual errors, but mostly correct
Extras
ClamAV - A GPL antivirus toolkit for Unix Simplier binary package search/install - Perl script for searching and installing an OpenBSD package Getting started with launchd - As of Tiger, launchd takes over many tasks from cron, xinetd, mach_init, and init Lingon - GUI for launchd configuration files and controlling them through launchctl cronnix - A Mac OS X GUI frontend to cron
AppleScript
see: Things Macintosh (Developer’s Corner)

Other pages in the “Things” series are:

Things Mac OS X – for Mac OS X GUI related, data security and encryption, etc.
Things eMail – Mac OS X eMail clients, server info, and SPAM countermeasures
Things Webmastering – for Webmasters, Server Admin’s, HTML, CGI, etc.
Things Macintosh (Developer’s Corner) – resources for Macintosh software developers
Things Macintosh (misc) – hardware, shopping, news, vintage (including OS 8-9), etc.

This page was last updated on 19-April-2011