A shell is an interactive user interface with an operating system.
The shell is the layer of programming that understands and executes the commands a user enters.
In some systems, the shell is called a command interpreter.
A shell usually implies an interface with a command syntax.
To access your shell account, you need an SSH (Secure Shell)
program, such as PuTTY. You can download it here
for free. Just configure the program to connect to cowboy.net,
port 22 and login with your Cowboy.Net username and
password if Cowboy.Net has given you shell access.
If they haven't, you will get an invalid username/password error
and will be denied. Contact Cowboy.Net to request access. |
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Upon logging into your shell account, you will automatically be placed in your
home directory (/home/user/). Type 'pwd' at the command prompt
to see what that directory is called, as displayed in the
picture above.
For those of you who are not familiar with UNIX commands, here is a brief list
of basics:
ls -- Shows you the contents of your current directory (similar to
dir in DOS).
ls -la -- Displays a more detailed listing of your current directory.
ls -a -- Displays all files, including hidden files.
pwd -- Displays your current directory location.
pine -- Opens an e-mail/news program.
sz -- Tells our system to send something to you via Z-modem.
rz -- Tells our system to prepare to receive something via Z-modem.
cd -- Changes your current directory to one specified with the
command:
For example, to change from
/home/joebob/ to /home/joebob/public_html/, just
type:
cd public_html or cd /home/joebob/public_html
help -- This will give you more help on commands, etc.
One thing to remember is that UNIX is "case sensitive". For example, this means that the file 'graphic.gif' is different from 'GRAPHIC.GIF' and 'Graphic.Gif' as well.
A filename containing one upper-case/lower-case letter can cause many problems, especially when building web pages.
A good rule of thumb is to make all of your HTML tags uppercase and your filenames as lowercase.
This makes things much more uniform and makes finding tags within the document easier. |
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