Creating and modifying files in Unix

Waldo has a number of text editors installed. The simplest is pico which is the editor that pine uses to allow you to write mail. It is very simple to use and has onscreen help. Just type pico. To edit a particular file type pico filename where 'filename' is the name of the file you wish to edit.

Below are two very simple sets of instructions for forwarding mail and editing a simple webpage.

Forwarding mail

If you want to create or edit a file such as .forward then you would login, and type pico .forward

You can then type into that file whatever you want to store in there. Saving the file is done by the command Control O - press the Control key and O key at the same time.

Webpages

To create a very simple webpage login, then type cd pubwww then pico index.html. This will load your index.html file into the editor.

index.html is the default page which will load up when someone looks at www.umu.man.ac.uk/yoursociety. You may already have a contact page there from when your account was created. Feel free to edit this text as you wish.

To save your file, use the command Control O.

A full UNIX shell account is provided for societies to use - if you don't know what this is, you don't need to, it's for those with geeks as webmasters.

Unix help

  • Type man command where 'command' is the name of the command you are interested in
  • More general Unix help is available when you type man help
  • To get a listing of all the files in a directory, run the command ls
  • To change into a different directory, type cd directory where 'directory' is the name of the directory you wish to change into
  • For example, cd pubwww will change into the directory pubwww (which is where your webpages are stored)
  • To get back to where you started, just type cd without a directory name
The services described here are for University of Manchester Students' Union registered societies only. All requests must be made from yoursociety@umsu.man.ac.uk to root@umsu.man.ac.uk.