Glossary

IP address
The Internet name or number of a networked computer.

The name form of the address consists of several names separated by periods. The name generally represents the logical location of the machine within the hierarchy of a given organization, with the dot-separated names becoming more general from left to right.

For example, the IP name vlager.vbrew.com refers to a specific machine, vlager which is a one of a group of machines used by the Virtual Brewery (vbrew) which is one of many commercial institutions (com).

Those who are familiar which IP naming conventions can usually quickly tell a computer's organizational affiliation by the right two names on the IP name. UNIX users may use the whois command on the right two parts of the name to find the location of more cryptic names, e.g. 

    $ whois vbrew.com



    Virtual Brewery and Winery --  (VBREW-DOM)

       555 West Lager Street

       Beaujolais, Texas 76543



       Domain Name: VBREW.COM



    (the rest of the output from the whois command is not shown)
The number form of the address always consists of four numbers separated by periods. In this case the hierarchy grows more specific from left to right. For example, the IP number of vlager.vbrew.com could be 191.72.1.1 and all IP numbers at the Virtual Brewery, would begin with 191.72.
UNIX

Paraphrased from "UNIX System Administration Handbook" by Nemeth, Snyder and Seebass:
An elegant, flexible, consistent, powerful, cryptic, idiosyncratic and unstandardized operating system.
The "flavor" (unavoidable-geek-term) of UNIX on the CS Server  is Linux , using the version 5.x of RedHat .

The UNIX Philosophy: Or Why UNIX Is UNIX and Not DOS

UNIX password
The password, known only to you, which must be entered at the Password: prompt when telneting, ftping or rlogining into cs.wbc.com. You can change your password at any time by telneting into cs.wbc.edu and using the passwd command. Your password is encrypted so that only you know it, so don't forget it!.

UNIX prompt
The command prompt presented by UNIX where you can type in commands such as pwd or ls. It usually looks something like :
    cs.wbc.edu:~$
UNIX username
A unique name assigned to a user when a UNIX account is created. The name is usually some combination of parts the person's proper name or a nickname with a limit of eight characters in length, e.g. johndoe, jsmith, thumper, merlin or afabian. The name is generally all lowercase since mixed case is more difficult to type and UNIX is case-sensitive.

The username is public knowledge and easily determinable for any user of the system unlike the UNIX password.

The username is also known as a login or loginname.

current working directory
The directory in the UNIX filesystem that is the default directory for most commands that you execute without a directory specification; i.e. the directory that you are currently in. If you issue commands such as ls without a directory argument, your current working directory is used as the default argument.

You can determine your current working directory entering the pwd command at the UNIX prompt. Your first current working directory after logging into UNIX is always your home directory.

filesystem
The collection of files and directories located on a computer's hard drive..

home directory
The UNIX directory you are automatically placed in when you login into your account. You can return to this directory at any time by entering the command, cd. For users of the CS Server  Linux flavor of UNIX, the home directories are in the path /home followed by the first letter of the users name.

(e.g. /home/smith is the path for the home directory of the user, smith).

You may create whatever files and subdirectories you wish within your home directory. Other users may or may not be able to access files in your home directory depending upon how the file and directory permissions are set. You can see the permissions by entering the command, ls -al. You may change permissions using the chmod command.

parent directory
The directory located above the a directory in the hierarchy. The parent directory of the current working directory can always be accessed through the special .. directory (visible with the ls -a command).

Examples:

path
The specification of a file in terms of the where it is in the hierarchy of directories in the filesystem. This specification is relative to the root directory if it begins with a slash(/) or relative to your current working directory if the beginning slash is omitted. A full path is generally one specified relative to the root directory and so always begins with a slash (/).

Example paths: 

    /           the root directory



    .           your current working directory



    ..          the directory above your current working directory

                (the parent directory)

    /u/s/smith    user smith's home directory

    /u/s/smith/.bash_profile   the full path of the .bashr_profile 

                file in user smith's home directory

    bin         a directory named bin which is a subdirectory of the 

                directory you are currently in

    /bin        a directory named bin which is a subdirectory of the 

                root directory

    ../bin      a directory named bin which is a subdirectory of the

                directory above you (the parent directory of your

                current working directory)
root directory
The top (or bottom depending upon how you look at it) of the directory hierarchy in the filesystem. All directories and files branch off of the root directory. The root directory is specified with a path of just the slash: /

shell
The UNIX shell is the interface between the user and the operating system. The shell, among other things, presents the UNIX prompt to accept user commands.

telnet
One way of connecting to another machine (usually a UNIX -based machine) over a network using a text-only (no graphics) interface.