Call your PRIMUS dial-up access number

At the userid prompt, enter the userid you chose followed by a return. The system then will ask you for your password. Enter the assigned password and press return. (Notice that as a security measure, your password is not displayed.)

The next prompt will be to verify that you are using VT100 emulation, Press a return and you will be at the shore% prompt, which is your jumping- off point.

Congratulations! You have logged on successfully.

This would be a good time to change your password. At the % prompt type the following command: "passwd"

It should look like this:

% passwd 

You will be asked to enter your existing password and then your new one twice to check for typos.

A note about passwords. PRIMUS requires a password which is at least 6 and no more than 8 characters in length. It may be in both upper and lower case and may also contain numbers. In the event that you should forget your password, give us a call and we will change it for you.

Specific things to avoid in a password:

1. Your name
2. Your user ID
3. Words from a dictionary or common proper nouns

When you first log on and are at the % prompt, you are in your home directory, the contents of which can be viewed by using the "ls" (no quotes) command.

%  ls

It should look something like this:

The "ls" command is the same for all practical purposes as the "dir" command in DOS. It will list the contents of the directory, in this case your home or root directory. The options for UNIX commands are prefixed with a dash or hyphen. These options come directly after the command name and before any filenames. Hence, the "ls" command can be modified with the addition of flags. The "ls -a" flag will list all files in the directory. All files preceded by a period are normally invisible, and are not normally displayed when using "ls". These files are often called dot files and are initialization files for various programs. Some examples are:

.login       .cshrc       .newsrc      .mailrc
 

• cd ..(change up to parent of current directory)
• cp <file> <newfile> (copy or rename)
• rm <file1> <file2>... (remove)
• more <file> (display one page at a time)
• cd <file> (change to specific file)
• mkdir <directory name>, rmdir <directory name>(make directory, remove directory like DOS, except use "/" instead of "\")
• sz, sx (for downloading files using zmodem or xmodem)

• ftp (for files)
• pine (for email)
• trn (for news)
• gopher (internet navigator)
• lynx (internet navigator)
• help (local gopher server with help topics)

Remember, you are in your home directory when you log in. Typing the command 'cd' with no argument will also take you back to it if you cd'd somewhere else. See the advanced help topics for more info.

Back to Shell/Unix Support