elmo@music.columbia.edu

You will occasionally receive important notices at your music email address, so you'll want to either check it often or have your mail forwarded to another account. Contact me for information on forwarding your mail. You can use either a command-line email program like pine or a POP3 client such as Eudora or Netscape to check your mail.

File Storage

[elmo@yowl elmo]$ cd /music/username

to move into your directory on the music file server. Or to copy a file from the file server to your home directory on the local workstation you would do:

[elmo@yowl elmo]$ cp /music/username/filename ./

The menu bar has a number of useful icons on it. The large foot icon on the left side is a pop-up menu that contains various sub-menus and commands. One of the most important is the "Log out" command. Make sure that you log off of the machine every time you finish a session.

If you're more comfortable with a command line environment, you can get a terminal window by clicking on the "monitor with a footprint" icon in the menu bar at the bottom of the screen. All of the usual UNIX commands will work.

In the foot menu on the menu bar is a submenu called "Sound Applications." To run one of the applications in this menu just select it and it will run. Only non-command line applications can be run in this way.

Running command-line applications is a tiny bit more complicated, but it's still pretty easy:

• Click on the "monitor with a footprint" icon in the menu bar. This will open a terminal window. You will be in your home directory to start.
• Type the name of the program you want to run. For instance, to run CMIX:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ CMIX < myscore.sco

Backups

• man: short for "manual". If you want to know how to use a command, there is usually a manual entry for it. If for example, you want to know how to use the ls command, you would type:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ man ls

• ls: prints out the files in your current directory. There are various arguments that you can give to the ls command to get it to print out more or less information about the files. Read the ls man page for more information. Try:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ ls -la

• cd: short for "change directory." Does just what it says. Some directories have special names: "./" is the directory you're currently in. "../" is the directory above the one you're currently in. "~" is your home directory. To change to the directory above the current one:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ cd ../

  To change into a directory called "bunny":

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ cd bunny

  To change into your folder (assuming you're elmo) on the fileserver music:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ cd /music/elmo

  To change into your home directory:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ cd ~

• pwd: "print working directory." This command will tell you where you are in case you get lost in the maze of directories. Just try it.

• cp: the copy command. Used to make a copy of a file (or directory, see the man page for cp.) To copy the file yanni.aiff to nerf.aiff:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ cp yanni.aiff nerf.aiff

  Note that now you have two copies of the same file, one called yanni.aiff and one called nerf.aiff. The files are identical, except for the name. To copy a file from your current directory to your directory on the fileserver music:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ cp yanni.aiff /music/elmo/yanni.aiff

  Again, note that you new have two copies of the file. That may or may not be what you want...

  To copy a file to a different machine use either sftp or scp, both listed below.

• mv: the move command. Used to move or rename a file (or directory, see the man page for mv.) To rename the file yanni.aiff to nerf.aiff:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ mv yanni.aiff nerf.aiff

  Note that there is no longer a file called yanni.aiff. It has been renamed to nerf.aiff. So unlike cp above, when you mv something you don't end up with two copies. To move a file called yanni.aiff from the fileserver music into your current directory:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ mv /music/elmo/yanni.aiff yanni.aiff

  This will remove the file from the file server, and place it in your current directory.

• rm: the remove command. Used to delete a file (or directory, see the rm man page.) To permanently delete a file called yanni.aiff:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ rm yanni.aiff

• mkdir: make a directory. Within your home directory you can create your own set of directories. You might want to keep scores in one directory, notes in another, sounds in another, etc. To create a directory called "sounds" in the current directory:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ mkdir sounds

  To make a directory called "scores" on the fileserver music:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ mkdir /music/elmo/scores

• cat: prints out the contents of a file. This is not for editing files, it's just for quickly seeing what's in a file. So do see what's in a file called "myideas":

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ cat myideas

  cat has many other uses ("cat" is short for concatenate), so read the man page.

• grep: searches a file for a word. grep is very useful for figuring out what's in your files. For instance, if you have a bunch of score files and you know that one of them has the word "monstertruck" in it, but you don't remember which one, you could do:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ grep monstertruck *.sco

  The "*" is a wildcard, so "*.sco" tells the system to search in any file ending with ".sco". grep can do many tricks, so read the man page.

• locate: locates files. If you have a file called "magicrobot" but you don't know where you put it you can:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ locate magicrobot

  Locate works from a database of files that is created each night -- so if you've just created a file and then try to locate it it will not show up. Also note that locate works on the whole filesystem -- it will find all files called "magicrobot" on the system. A more flexible and powerful (and a bit harder to use) way to find files is via the find command. See the find man page for details.

• ssh: the ssh (Secure SHell) program allows you to log into a remote machine. We are phasing out the use of telnet on our systems, so please only use telnet if you absolutely have to (i.e. if the remote machine does not support ssh. all cmc machines do support ssh). To log into to yowl.music.columbia.edu using ssh:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ ssh yowl.music.columbia.edu

• sftp: the sftp (Secure FTP) program allows you to transfer files from one machine to another. We are phasing out the use of regular ftp on our systems, so please only use regular ftp if you absolutely have to (i.e. if the remote machine does not support sftp. all cmc machines do support sftp). To transfer files to a remote machine via sftp:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ sftp woof.music.columbia.edu

• scp: the scp (Secure CoPy) program allows you to copy a file from one machine to another. it's like sftp except that you don't have to log into the remote machine to copy files. To copy the file bleep.txt from the current machinen to a remote machine:

  [elmo@yowl elmo]$ scp bleep.txt niaou.music.columbia.edu:bleep.txt

• w: the "who" command. Tells you who currently logged on to the machine you're logged on to.

Learning More

A great book that you'll use constantly: UNIX in a Nutshell from O'Reilly. You should be able to find it in any bookstore with a computer section.