Getting started

Once you have logged into the Minds computer, you will see a welcome screen and a command prompt. There are severa l things you can do from here. You can chat to people, read newsgroups, send text messages (the quick and easy way), make a webpage , and lots more. To get you started , here are some basic commands.

Basic Commands on Minds

Probably the most interesting thing to do on minds is to meet the other users , talk to them , and find out inform ation about them. That can all be done with just 3 commands, and are detailed as follows. We suggest you try each of them out

Interacting with Other Users

Having toyed around with files, lets try and communicate with other users, There are only 3 commands you need to b e able to talk to people and find out who they are

users
: users displays a list of all the users currently logged in. Simply type users followed by return , and you will s ee a list of names. You should see your own username in there amongst the others. There are many commands that behave similar to this, 'w' , 'who' and a few others
hey username: hey is the instant messaging command , why not test it out by sending yourself a message. Just type hey followed by your username, and press return. Type your messages, for example testing one, two, three. When you are finished , just pres s return , then control D. This sends your message, and it should appear on your screen!
finger username: The finger command tells you information about a user, their real name, and some other stuff. Test it out , run fi nger dez to see information about the user dez. If you run the comman finger with nothing else, you will see a bit of information on everyone who is logged in.

Thats all the basic commands for interacting with other users, at this point, if you have any questions you can he y other users, and ask them. E.g.
hey dez
> Hi there, I am trying out these commands , and I am wondering how do I change the information for when somebody fin gers me
hey: dez - Groovy!
Simple as that , as away to your hearts content.

File System Commands

In minds, all your files will be located in one particular directory on our hardrive. For example, all my files ar e located in /home/dez. Likewise all your files will be held in the directory /home/USERNAME. To move around throu ghout the file system use the following commands. Try running a few of them as practice. Note , all commands in minds are in lowercase.

pwd: pwd stands for present working directory. This command tells y ou whereabouts in the File System you currently are.
ls: This commands will list all the files in the current directory you are in
cd ..: cd stands for change directory. The .. is a shortcut that means go up one level , for example from /home/dez to /home. To change directory back to your home directory , type cd ~. (~ is a shortcut for your own username)
cp file-name1 file-name2: Copy content of file-name1 into file-name2.
rm file-name1: Delete file fileName1.
mkdir directory-name: Create a directory with the name 'directory-name'.
cp index.html public_html: This will copy the file index.html into the directory called public_html. To copy an entire directory use 'cp -rf ' .
rmdir dirirectory-name: Remove directory 'directory-name' Note You can only delete a directory if it is empty.
rm -rf directory-name: Permanently delete directory 'directory-name' and all its content. Note, this won't ask questions , it will immediately remove all content, and you will not be able to retrieve it, so be careful with this command
less file-name: Display the contents of file 'file-name'.
nano filename1: Using the nano text editor, this command will open the file filename1 if it exists, otherwise it will create it a nd open it for editing.