The objective of this guide is not to teach you basic UNIX, but to tell you about the aspects that are specific to CERN. Nevertheless, Chapter 2 gives a brief overview of the main features of UNIX giving some examples from the Ultrix Operating System while Chapter 3 goes into more detail about file handling. If you have little or no experience with UNIX we recommend you get the book, "A Practical Guide to the UNIX System" by Mark G. Sobell [1], available from the User Consultancy office in building 513, sold at 60 SFrs. Another book which might be of interest is "UNIX for VMS Users" published by Digital Press and available from the UCO for 55 SFr [17]. For users wishing to do some C programming, also available is "A Book on C" by Al Kelley and Ira Pohl for 50 SFrs [2] and the "C++ Primer" by Stanley Lippman. For Fortran 90, the book "Fortran 90 Explained" by Metcalf and Reed [3] is also available there for 30 SFr. Anyone wishing to purchase any of these should send a mail to UCOBOOKS@CERNVM stating which book they wish to purchase and on which budget code; an electronic internal budget transfer (EDH) form will be generated and sent for approval. Alternatively, you may make out a paper request, the so-called TID form, and take this to the UCO.
In the formats displayed in this manual, bold indicates characters to be typed as is, and bold italic indicates arguments to be substituted. Examples are shown in typewriter font. Note that some examples are specific to certain architectures and may not work across all platforms; consult the man pages of your local system for full details.
We should also point out that work is currently in progress to define a default UNIX environment for new users. This Guide tries to illustrate some of the implications of this work by giving examples of recommended utilities. However, for more details on this work, the reader should consult the system manager of his or her local system in order to determine which parts of that environment are implemented and hence which further documentation it may be necessary to read.