16.A Creating an Alias 
15: Looking Through X-Windows
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16.A Creating an Alias |
15: Looking Through X-Windows |
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Unix and X-Windows allows you to change many aspects of the environment in which you work. Whether this is a blessing or a curse depends on how careful you are in making these changes. (You should be very careful; make them incrementally and keep backups along the way.)
Most environmental changes are made by creating or modifying your "dot files". You saw an example of this when you created the file.forward to automatically forward your mail. (You will also recall that dot files do not show up with the ordinary ls command, but do with all option ls -a.)
This section will deal with some basic changes you should be able to affect without adverse side effects:
Before you begin making any changes to your dot files, make backup copies. A common method is to copy .filename to .filename.old. In this way you can copy the old version back if your modification has unexpected results. (You may have to do the restoration in a telnet session if you have clobbered X-Windows).
Be aware that the form of the dot files differ somewhat for different implementations of Unix. So you may have to modify different files or use different commands for some changes. If you have difficulty, check with your system administrator (this is the kind of thing he wants to be asked about in order to avoid having you chase after him in a panic).
In many setups of clustered computer systems, there is a built in command to equip you with a standard set of dot files
> getdotfiles
> cp /usr/local/bin/COPYDEFAULTS .
The first command is for the OSU Physics cluster, the other is from a supercomputer center.
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16.A Creating an Alias |
15: Looking Through X-Windows |
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