Learning the command line

14th of June 2012 by liz

I posted this shell tutorial from Linux Command on Twitter earlier today. It’s had so many retweets and favourites that I thought it deserved a spot here as well for those of you who are new to Linux and want to get to grips with the command line in preparation for your Raspberry Pi.

Let us know how you get on!

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nickon314 wrote:Hi,It's not working. I cleared out all my local files - and used your script again.It's doesn't work - still failing with GST_EGL:checking for GST_EGL... configure: error: Package requirements (gstreamer-egl-1.0) were not met:I checked the whole file system and…
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http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/20 ... i_cluster/I'm sure someone will top that with a 100+ cluster some day soon.. Tim
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You mean like this one:http://www.monoprice.com/products/produ ... 1&format=2(That one is 15 feet. Which is pretty much as long as USB is specified for.)
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Thanks to @Raspberry_Pi for the awesome camera http://t.co/423s2IAmem Winnipeg, MB
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28 comments

It’s interesting you’ve started to post these things.. I wonder. If I do something cool that might be fun to beginners, will it be posted too?

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liz on
June 14, 2012 at 8:00 pm said:

Depends how cool it is! (And what I consider cool is *entirely* subjective.)

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Off-topic:
Is there a public photo of the bcm2835 die available? (wafer is fine, too)

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How many actual children have an actual Raspberry Pi? From all the internet activity I can see your order books must be mostly geeks looking for a cheapo linux media machine.

Surely if the aim is promoting IT to children it’s essential that children should be top of the order books, rather than geeks?

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liz on
June 15, 2012 at 1:17 pm said:

A surprisingly large number, considering that this initial release has been aimed at developers, and is meant to prepare the software stack for the kids’ release later in the year. (How do we know? They email us, as do their parents; and they come up out of the blue and talk to us at events.)

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In case it might prove useful, there is an introduction to BASH programming at
http://wbell.web.cern.ch/wbell/BashIntro/

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Looks like a great resource thanks for the link.

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WoW Liz, you are into Linux too ? I thought besides RPi you love only cooking (and sometime vacationing )

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AndrewS on
June 15, 2012 at 10:48 am said:

Never underestimate the Liz

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liz on
June 15, 2012 at 1:20 pm said:

Gosh, you got me. I am, in fact, uniquely unqualified to write anything at all here (let alone daily blog posts), because the only things I know how to do are WOMANSTUFF like cooking and frolicking in a bikini. Occasionally I do the two together, but the risk of getting hot fat on my naked midriff is just too much to bear sometimes.

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- Craig on
  June 15, 2012 at 3:32 pm said:
  
  Pics please.
  
  Comment ↓
- Abhi on
  June 16, 2012 at 7:43 pm said:
  
  What I meant is I’ve read only about RPi from you on this site & your blog just talked about food. (Also, I have some idea that you like StarTrek)
  Your Linux interest came as pleasant surprise
  
  Comment ↓
  - liz on
    June 16, 2012 at 8:17 pm said:
    
    Yes. It’s a food blog. I also have a ton of other interests which I do not share with the internet. It’s *crazy* round here, I tell you.
    
    Comment ↓
- bojan on
  June 17, 2012 at 7:44 am said:
  
  He did say ‘love’, not ‘can’ ….
  Peace.
  
  Comment ↓

Received my pi yesterday….. now were did i put the double cream.

One question though is should [sudo] reboot (or reboot -f, shutdown “now” etc) actually reboot the PI. It closes all the windows and all the leds go off BUT the unit does not restart. I am using Debian “squeeze” image from 19th of April.

I have to pull the power (USB keyboard and HDMI leads) for a min of 5miniutes before the unit will restart. I have tried several power supplies (and a bench supply), 3 different keymoards and 2 HDMI monitors and one TV, and several different SD cards but regardless of the equipment I need the 5min power down for it to restart?

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Gert van Loo on
June 15, 2012 at 9:45 am said:

Min restarts after a second or two. Also I never have to unplug the HDMI lead. In fact it should be impossible to feed the Pi from the HDMI lead as there is a diode which prevents that. Did you post in the ‘Trouble shooting’ forum?

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- Wombat on
  June 15, 2012 at 11:37 am said:
  
  I definatly need the hdmi leed unplugged! I just did a retest, leaving it for 10 min and reconecting the power, no reboot!
  
  Comment ↓

If anyone is waiting for their Pi and would like to pracatice some shell commands, there is a minimal shell enviroment you can play with here.

http://www.masswerk.at/jsuix/

A surprising amount works, but be aware that this is not a complete shell and set of tools.

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Hi liz i need help because i ordered my pi 2 weeks a go but afta 1 day i cancelled my order because i orderd the wrong equipment nd i still havent got my new activation code plz

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Nice one, added to the Puppy wiki ; -)
http://puppylinux.org/wikka/CommandLine

there’s a couple more ‘online consoles’ for those who can’t wait:-
http://www.goosh.org/
http://cb.vu/

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Top tip for the command line: make sure you know what the command does before typing it After all, you don’t want to blindly type something like
sudo rm -rf /*
without knowing what (devastating!) effect it’s likely to have…

For the uninitiated:
sudo – run as root
rm – remove (i.e. delete)
-rf – recursively (i.e. in this folder and all subfolders) and with force (i.e. don’t ask for confirmation)
/* – everything in (and below) the root folder (i.e. / – the folder that contains /boot, /sbin, /usr, /home etc.)

So you’re looking at a command which will attempt to delete everything from your SD card and render your system unusable. It’s a bit like the old DOS command deltree /y c:\*.*

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reiuyi on
June 15, 2012 at 5:53 pm said:

Liz edit – I’m pulling Reiuyi’s whole response here and replacing it with this.

Reiuyi – you should know better! You are a valued and regular visitor here, and usually your posts add to the conversation (if this wasn’t the case, I’d have banned you already for this) But even in jest, trying to get someone to format their machine isn’t funny; there are plenty of casual browsers around here who don’t read carefully and who might take you seriously. Don’t do ANYTHING like this again, or I will ban you so fast you won’t believe it.

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- reiuyi on
  June 15, 2012 at 7:34 pm said:
  
  Kids, the message is; don’t joke around too much and add to the conversation!
  
  Comment ↓
  - liz on
    June 15, 2012 at 11:23 pm said:
    
    Thanks for understanding – I realise you were just kidding, it’s just that occasionally a sense of humour isn’t something that people read into posts like the one you left!
    
    Comment ↓

Thanks for the link! I also liked on the home page, there’s a picture of the terminal waiting for input, and the headline, “Now What?” directly beneath it.

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I am sorry that this post is unrelated to the article above however I was not sure where to put it.
Where is the Fedora Remix download and why does it not appear on the downloads page anymore? Fedora was going to be my operating system of choice and I would like to keep it that way; Now I am stuck with an Okayish Debian. Not Happy

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liz on
June 17, 2012 at 12:04 pm said:

The final release was too buggy for us to be able to recommend wholeheartedly – there’s a new one in the works from the team in Canada which should have fewer problems.

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New Linux users probably need to skim through the Linux File System Standard as well (http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html)

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