Virtual Private Server User Guide

Internet and UNIX Basics

>

If you ve made it this far, congratulations! You ve successfully established your 

first connection to your VPS server. The > symbol is called a command prompt 

and indicates that your server is now waiting for a command from you. 

Note: The > symbol may appear as a %, $, or # sign depending 

on the user shell that you are actually using and the user you 

used to log in

You can now begin navigating your system and issuing commands. Your 

commands are interpreted by a user interface program known as a shell. After a 

brief introduction to a few basic UNIX commands, we will discuss shells in a little 

more detail. 

More information on connecting via SSH and Telnet from a Windows PC can be 

found by searching the Answer Center at http://answers.interland.com. There are 

a number of basic UNIX commands that you will want to become familiar with. 

Some of the most basic are discussed in this section:

man: A type of UNIX help system that displays a "manual page" about a specified 

command. You can learn more about many of the commands in this list, or those 

used throughout this guide, by typing "man command," where command is the 

name of the command you want to learn more about.

pwd: Short for Print Working Directory. Displays the path to the current directory. 

ls (list): Displays a list of the files and directories in the current directory.

ll (long list): This is not really a command, but a commonly used alias or short cut 

for the above ls command with the  lA flags added, it displays a "long listing" of 

files, directories, permissions and file size in the current directory. Changing some 

of your systems defaults may make this alias cease functioning, but ls  lA will 

always work. 

grep: Searches files or directories for a specific word, phrase, or file.

cd (change directory): Used to move to a different directory. If no directory is 

specified, it will take you to your home directory.

mkdir (make directory): Used to create a new directory.

mv (move): Moves a file into another directory, or renames a file by "moving" an 

existing file to a new file with a new name. 

rm (remove): Removes a file or directory.

cp (copy): Makes a copy of a file or directory.

touch: Creates a new, empty file or updates the date that an existing file was last 

modified.

echo: Used to print text to the display, or alternately to another device or file. 

Technical Training Department

August 2004

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