Introduction to Unix

Course overview

Uplatz offers comprehensive training on Unix and Shell Scripting. This is video-based online course (self-paced training). You will be awarded Course Completion Certificate at the end of the course.

UNIX is an operating system developed in the Bell Laboratories of AT&T and is an example a multi-tasking, multi-user operating system. It provides its users with: program development tools; electronic communications facilities, such as an electronic mail; text editors and text formatters. There are also many development tools available as standard within the UNIX operating system that other operating systems require as add-ons.

Initial proprietary derivatives included the HP-UX and the SunOS systems. However, growing incompatibility between these systems led to the creation of interoperability standards like POSIX. Modern POSIX systems include Linux, its variants, and Mac OS.

Unix is the most powerful and popular multi-user and multi-tasking Operating System. The basic concepts of Unix were originated in the Multics project of 1969. The Multics system was intended as a time-sharing system that would allow multiple users to simultaneously access a mainframe computer.

Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others developed the basic building blocks of Unix including a hierarchical file system, i.e, the concepts of processes and a command line interpreter for the PDP-7. From there, multiple generations of Unix were developed for various machines.

Growing incompatibility between these systems led to the creation of interoperability standards like POSIX and Single Unix Specification.

UNIX provides a series of shells. The UNIX operating system is made up of three parts; the kernel, the shell and the programs.

The user is on the outermost shell, the second layer is called the shell that interprets your commands and passes the instructions to the operating system proper, while the third layer is the kernel which handles the interaction between the shell and the hardware; and the fourth layer is the hardware itself.

The standard shell is the Bourne Shell which was designed for general purpose use. It is relatively small, and efficient, but lacks certain facilities, such as a command history and aliasing. Two popular enhanced shells are the C Shell and the Bourne Shell. The C shell is less efficient compared to the Bourne and Korn shells; the Korn shell is larger than the Bourne shell but it is more efficient because of its built-in functions.

The shell interacts with the UNIX's Kernel which is heart of the operatiing system. The kernel is the bridge between the application packages and the hardware it is running on.

Course Objective

This Unix Operating System training by Uplatz introduces the students to the main concepts of the UNIX Operating System. The most commonly used Unix commands and utilities are described in detail as are the command line wildcard and redirection facilities. The mechanisms by which a user acquires a login environment are discussed and the main features of the Korn/Posix/Bash Shells are introduced.

The Shell Programming part of the course is designed to give students practical experience in developing and writing UNIX shell scripts. Most of the built-in shell commands are introduced along with the main program control structures.