> 1) How do I issue an "ls" command that lists the directory
> tree structure
> from my current location?
> Kinda like typing a "dir" in DOS.
> I have tried "ls sda1" with no success.
> When I type in "ls" it just says Desktop.
>
> 2) How to I navigate around the directory structure? Kinda
> like CD\name or
> CD ..
> I would like to explore the contents of directories on
> Linux, I just
> don't know the commands to navigate around.
>
> 3) I would love to read the manuals or documentation. How
> do you open up a
> documentation file
> from the command line? Can anyone give me a basic tip
> on how to get
> started opening documentation
> files from a command line.
Wow! You really are a newbie!
Ok.
path names in linux are separated by forward slashes, not back slashes.
cd /
cd /etc
cd /home/someuser
will navigate you around. As in dos, ".." is the dirctory above where you
are now.
pwd
is "print working directory" and will tell you what directory you are in.
note that linux does not have a: c: d: drives etc. Instead, all the
"devices" attached to your system are in the /dev directory. For instance,
if you have an IDE hard drive (and who doesn't), the master hard disk on
IDE1 will be /dev/hda. This hard disk will be split into partitions (at
least one). These partitions will be /dev/hda1, /dev/hda2 etc. These are
hardware devices, not directories. To treat a disk device as a directory, it
must be "mounted". Of course, usually this gets done at boot time and you
don't need to worry about it.
For instance, my hard disk has 2 partitions. the first has win98, the second
linux. When I run windows, the first partition is visible as c:, and the
second is not visible.
When I run linux, the hard disk is /dev/hda. The first partition is
/dev/hda1, and the second /dev/hda2. /dev/hda2 is "mounted" as "/" -- the
root directory -- and is understood as having been formatted as a linux
"ext2" type disk. /dev/hda1 is mounted at "/mnt/win98" and is understood as
having been formatted as a windows "vfat" disk. The windows "C:\My
Documents" folder is visible as "/mnt/win98/My Documents". See the point?
Linux handles multiple disks differently to windows, and makes a distinction
between a "device" and a "file system".
So if "/" is some particular hard disk partition, how is it that the devices
are at /dev? Well, my understanding is that /dev does not really exist as a
directory on a hard disk. Linux just pretends that it is. Likewise, all the
processes in memory can be seen inside the /proc directory, which is not a
"real" directory at all either.
The documentation command is "man". Stands for "man(ual)". Try it. You must
specify a topic.
man man
man fstab
man ls
man rpm
all of the man pages are in the /usr/doc/man directory (I think), but they
are zipped and stored in a weird format. But you may want to browse that
directory to get an idea of what's available.
Also handy is
man -K someword
which will get all manual pages containing 'someword'.
to dump a file to the terminal (aka: "read a text file"), use the "less"
command:
less /etc/fstab
you can also use "more" or "cat".
