command. In the following example, the -u option says to add information about idle time and the process ID and -H asks that a header be printed:
$ who -uH NAME LINE TIME IDLE PID COMMENT chris tty1 Jan 13 20:57 . 2019
The output from this who command shows that the user chris is logged in on tty1 (which is the first virtual console on the monitor connected to the computer) and his login session began at 20:57 on January 13. The IDLE time shows how long the shell has been open without any command being typed (the dot indicates that it is currently active). PID shows the process ID of the user's login shell. COMMENT would show the name of the remote computer from which the user had logged in, if that user had logged in from another computer on the network, or the name of the local X display if that user were using a Terminal window (such as :0.0).
Locating commands
Now that you have typed a few commands, you may wonder where those commands are located and how the shell finds the commands you type. To find commands you type, the shell looks in what is referred to as your path. For commands that are not in your path, you can type the complete identity of the location of the command.
If you know the directory that contains the command that you want to run, one way to run it is to type the full, or absolute, path to that command. For example, you run the date command from the /bin directory by entering the following:
$ /bin/date
Of course, this can be inconvenient, especially if the command resides in a directory with a long pathname. The better way is to have commands stored in well-known directories and then add those directories to your shell's PATH environment variable. The path consists of a list of directories that are checked sequentially for the commands you enter. To see your current path, enter the following:
$ echo $PATH /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:↵ /home/chris/bin
The results show a common default path for a regular Linux user. Directories in the path list are separated by colons. Most user commands that come with Linux are stored in the /bin, /usr/bin, or /usr/local/bin directory. The /sbin and /usr/sbin directories contain administrative commands (some Linux systems don't put those directories in regular users' paths). The last directory shown is the bin directory in the user's home directory (/home/chris/bin).
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If you want to add your own commands or shell scripts, place them in the bin directory in your home directory (such as /home/chris/bin for the user named chris). This directory is automatically added to your path in some Linux systems, although you may need to create that directory or add it to your PATH on other Linux systems. So, as long as you add the command to your bin with execute permission, you can begin using it by simply typing the command name at your shell prompt. To make commands available to all users, add them to /usr/local/bin.
Unlike some other operating systems, Linux does not, by default, check the current directory for an executable before searching the path. It immediately begins searching the path, and executables in the current directory are run only if they are in the PATH variable or you give their absolute (such as /home/chris/scriptx.sh) or relative (for example, ./scriptx.sh) location.
The path directory order is important. Directories are checked from left to right. So, in this example, if there is a command called foo located in both the /usr/bin and /bin directories, the one in /usr/bin is executed. To have the other foo command run, you either type the full path to the command or change your PATH variable. (Changing your PATH and adding directories to it are described later in this chapter.)
Not all of the commands you run are located in directories in your PATH variable. Some commands are built into the shell. Other commands can be overridden by creating aliases that define any commands and options that you want the command to run. There are also ways of defining a function that consists of a stored series of commands. Here is the order in which the shell checks for the commands you type:
1 Aliases. These are names set by the alias command that represent a particular command and a set of options. Type alias to see what aliases are set. Often, aliases enable you to define a short name for a long, complicated command. (I describe how to create your own aliases later in this chapter.)
2 Shell reserved word. These are words reserved by the shell for special use. Many of these are words that you would use in programming-type functions, such as do, while, case, and else. (I cover some of these reserved words in Chapter 7, “Writing Simple Shell Scripts.”)
3 Function. This is a set of commands that is executed together within the current shell.
4 Built-in command. This is a command built into the shell. As a result, there is no representation of the command in the filesystem. Some of the most common commands that you will use are shell built-in commands, such as cd (to change directories), echo (to output text to the screen), exit (to exit from a shell), fg (to bring a command running in the background to the foreground), history (to see a list of commands that were previously run), pwd (to list the present working directory), set (to set shell options), and type (to show the location of a command).
5 Filesystem command. This command is stored in and executed from the computer's filesystem. (These are the commands that are indicated by the value of the PATH variable.)
To determine the location of a particular command, you can use the type command. (If you are using a shell other than bash, use the which command instead.) For example, to find out where the bash shell command is located, enter the following:
$ type bash bash is /bin/bash
Try these few words with the type command to see other locations of commands: which, case, and return. If a command resides in several locations, you can add the -a option to have all of the known locations of the command printed. For example, the command type -a ls should show an aliased and filesystem location for the ls command.
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Sometimes, you run a command and receive an error message that the command was not found or that permission to run the command was denied. If the command was not found, check that you spelled the command correctly and that it is located in your PATH variable. If permission to run the command was denied, the command may be in the PATH variable but may not be executable. Also remember that case is important, so typing CAT or Cat will not find the cat command.
If a command is not in your PATH variable, you can use the locate command to try to find it. Using locate, you can search any part of the system that is accessible to you. (Some files are only accessible to the root user.) For example, if you wanted to find the location of the chage command, you could enter the following:
$ locate chage /usr/bin/chage /usr/sbin/lchage /usr/share/man/fr/man1/chage.1.gz /usr/share/man/it/man1/chage.1.gz /usr/share/man/ja/man1/chage.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/chage.1.gz /usr/share/man/man1/lchage.1.gz /usr/share/man/pl/man1/chage.1.gz /usr/share/man/ru/man1/chage.1.gz /usr/share/man/sv/man1/chage.1.gz /usr/share/man/tr/man1/chage.1.gz
Notice that locate not only found the chage command, it also found the lchage command and a variety of man pages associated with chage for different languages. The locate